AllBusiness.com’s Sales Advisor Keith Rosen interviews Razi Imam, CEO of Landslide Technologies.

Keith Rosen: So Razi, some people are out there saying that cold calling is actually dying or even dead. What’s your take on that?

Razi Imam: You know, I completely disagree with that statement. Cold calling is dead is like saying, you know, when VCRs came out and saying the movie theaters are dead. One technology doesn’t replace a practice. Cold calling is a selling practice. What has happened is it’s an evolution of cold calling. Whereas now, when you cold call a person you are more aware of their company, their background, their buying behaviors, you’re more aware. So when we meant cold-calling, we meant we had no idea about who we were calling. Well, now the call is cold in the sense that that person may not know who you are but the call is really warm from your perspective of making the call because you know everything about the person, you know everything about the company, you know their buying habits, you know whether their acquisitions are good, whether they’re growing as an organization, they’re opening branches, they’re having worldwide branches. So I don’t think the act of cold calling is dying, I think it’s changing. Now marketing can generate certain types of this. I can give you an example. We use cold calling in our organization into companies that we realize have a certain behavior. For example, if I notice that they come in and they actually acquire from Amazon your book, you know, you’re all about selling. Clearly, this person is having some struggles in selling and is wanting to read a full book about how to become a better salesperson. Well, when our sales organization picks up the phone and calls them, we don’t call them and say, “Would you like to buy Landslide?” We actually talk about the book that they recently bought from Amazon. I mean, that’s how cold calling is changing. It’s still a cold call but you’re more aware and you’re calling people who have been filtered through other programs that had nothing to do with your organization but you know they fit the criteria of a cold call.