What is the best way to get meetings on the calendar in 2025? Cold calling or cold email? That’s the million dollar question these days.
Some salespeople will swear that cold calling is the only effective method of client acquisition.
Others will say it’s better to hang up the dusty old phone and start sending emails instead.
And honestly, each side makes a solid argument. But let’s finally get to the bottom of this, once and for all.
A Primer on Cold Outreach
Cold calling has been around since the 1800s (thank you Alexander Graham Bell). It’s tried and true, and it works. In fact, some companies have scaled from zero to 9-figures in revenue with cold calling alone.
Cold emailing, on the other hand, is much newer. It only hit the scene in the last few decades. And guess what — cold email can also help you score meetings… if you know what you’re doing. (Don’t worry, we’ll get there.)
So the top sales pros don’t choose between cold calling and cold email. They do both simultaneously.
RELATED: The Trojan Horse Method of Sales
Different but Complementary Tools
Think of cold calling and cold email as two different tools in your toolbelt. They have equal but opposite strengths. Where cold calling can’t get the job done, cold emailing comes in and picks up the slack, and vice versa.
For instance, you can’t build an authentic connection with your prospect in an email like you can on the phone. But you also can’t reach out to thousands of prospects in a day like you can with cold email.
These cold outreach methods also compliment one another in a huge way. A cold call is so much more effective if you first send a cold email to warm things up and allow your prospect to get acquainted with your name, your company, and your offering.
RELATED: AI-powered Personalization – Cold Calling Tactics to Boost Sales Numbers
The Power of Cold Calling
It’s easy – All you need is a phone and phone numbers. That’s it. There is no setting up special software, learning the ropes of AI tools, and battling with email servers blocking inboxes (looking at you, cold email campaigns!).
It’s immediate – I can hire an SDR, train him in a matter of hours, and get meetings by EOD or tomorrow at the latest. There is no back-and-forth over email. It’s instant and immediate. And because it’s instant, the sales cycle is also shortened.
It’s guaranteed – Your cold email campaign might flop because of technical failures, getting blacklisted, etc. But cold calling is pretty much guaranteed. if you hit the phones consistently, you will book meetings. Although your efforts might be completely inefficient, you really can’t fail unless you throw in the towel.
It’s measurable – You can make 1,000 calls and know your numbers. How many prospects answered? How many conversations did you have? How many meetings were booked? How many of those meetings were held? And how many of those converted to won deals? Unlike some forms of marketing, cold calling is simple to measure, track, and improve.
It’s scalable – If you have one SDR booking 20 meetings a month, it stands to reason that hiring 4 more SDRs (of a similar skillset) will net you 100 meetings a month. You can scale up or scale down depending on your budget, goals, ambition, etc.
When to use Cold Calling: You can use cold calling as a standalone strategy without cold email. Also use cold calling when you want to make a sale this week, not next month or next year.
RELATED: The War-Cry of a Sales Pro – Why Average Won’t Cut It
The Power of Cold Email
It’s affordable – Let’s say you’re a small but growing company and have a $10K budget this month for outreach. With that $10K you can bring on 2-3 SDRs and reach out to 2,500 prospects. That’s great, but you can reach 25,000 prospects for a fraction of that price with cold email. The software will cost a couple hundred, and the only other price is the lead list (if you don’t have leads already).
It’s automated – Another beautiful thing about cold email is that it can be set and forget it. You can set up a campaign and let it run its course over a month or two. Once the email sequence is written, and the leads are loaded into your sending software, just hit ‘Start Campaign’ and then you’re on auto-pilot.
It works round-the-clock – Cold emails can be scheduled to send any time of the day and any day of the week. And oftentimes, prospects will open emails on their smartphones in the middle of the night. So you could potentially be selling your product or service at 2am — which you could never do with cold calling.
It’s ultra-scalable – I said cold calling is scalable, and it is. But cold emailing is 10x more scalable. Why? Because it doesn’t require the manpower of cold calling. If a campaign of 1,000 emails has a healthy open rate and reply rate, then scale that to 10,000 emails, then 100,000 emails. And this can happen in 2-3 months’ time… it won’t take a full year like cold calling would.
It warms up the cold call – Which opening line is better? “Hi Mr. Prospect, this is JL, I know you haven’t heard of me but…” OR “Hi, this is JL with C-Level Partners. The email I sent you yesterday — you got that right? Great…” In other words, cold emailing done right turns cold calling into warm calling.
When to use Cold Email: Use cold email to supercharge your cold calling efforts. But never use it as a standalone strategy.
RELATED: How to Elevate Your Status to Close More Deals
A Multi-channel Approach
If you had to choose between cold email and cold calling, go with cold calling. It’s simply more effective, and you basically eliminate all the guesswork that comes with setting up technical cold email software. Remember, with cold calling, all you need is a phone and phone numbers! But… thankfully, you don’t have to choose. You can — and should! — do both!
Creating a multi-channel strategy helps you to squeeze every bit of juice out of your best leads. Doing outbound without a sequence (or one-call quitting) is like sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner and taking one small bite out of a giant turkey drumstick and then tossing it in the garbage. There’s SO much more meat on that bone. Stay hungry and get after it! Reach out several times, via phone, email, LinkedIn, and other social channels to maximize your chances of closing a deal.
Final Words
I’ve heard it said that cold emailing gets your foot in the door, but cold calling gets you through the door. So while you could just barge your way into a prospect’s office with a cold call, it’s best to leverage the warm-up potential of a cold email to make the meeting feel more natural, organic, and less intrusive.
So once your cold calling engine is firing on all cylinders, you absolutely should begin sending a cold email sequence to your prospects. Otherwise, you’re leaving money on the table. Just remember to *not* use cold emailing strategy as the only cold outreach you do. That’s a surefire way to fail. Use it in conjunction with a strong call campaign, and you’re golden.
Until next time…
Johnny-Lee Reinoso