Secret #1: Stop asking, "How are you today?"  Believe it or not, 80% of your competition still advertise themselves as lame sales reps making cold calls by asking this over used and insincere question.  Nothing identifies you more as a pesky telemarketer than opening your call with that question.

Instead, try: "Hi _________, how's your (day of the week) going?"

Cold calling is one of the things most people seem to ask me for help with, usually because they want to get better results from it – although some people like to avoid it altogether!  However for a smaller business, often the problem with their cold calling isn’t cold calling – it’s something earlier in the process that’s causing them problems later on.