Cold calling, done by folks who have done it before, always works a bit. Especially if you include “cold emailing” and “cold door knocking” into the definition of cold calling. Look at companies like Zocdoc that amazingly penetrated markets like doctors’ offices this way.
You should always have an outbound sales team, at least, at some stage.
The question is, can it work a lot?
The reality is no matter how trained your team is here, some markets have higher “connect rates” than others.
Sales automation, marketing automation, business intelligence and analytics … segments with hundreds of vendors … typically have lower “connect rates” at least until you have a brand.
Verticals and segments with (x) relatively few vendors and (y) relatively high budgets, tend to have high connect rates. As high as 10% or more. Super-crowded spaces, with non-brands calling in … tend to have connect rates of well below 1%.
50 calls a day x 10% connect rate = a winning strategy
50 calls a day x 0.5% = ??? tough
