What do you think of my method for getting first clients—cold calling businesses to interview them about workflows and using that as a service? Would you recommend cold calling in 2025?
Your cold‑call‑interview method works for early clients, but in 2025 Loom videos are better: they’re asynchronous, avoid gatekeepers, let you send the video directly via DM, and remove live‑call pressure. Use Loom unless you’re in a hyperspecific vertical where phone contact is unavoidable.
Cold calling is a very direct way to reach people, but it's inefficient—you might spend only about 15 minutes of an hour on actual calls, with pickup rates around 3-6%. This means you often waste time on dialing, voicemails, and unanswered calls. I've made over 10,000 cold calls in my career and realized I could achieve the same outreach using Loom videos: record a video, send it, and it lands at the top of their inbox with no dial time, plus you can automate follow-ups. Loom saves time, lets you show visuals, and avoids the spam fatigue of phone calls. So instead of cold calling, just send Loom videos.
Cold calling isn't effective because it's asynchronous, requires you to be available when the prospect is, and you have to get past gatekeepers. A better approach is to send Loom videos that prospects can watch on their own time, letting you follow up repeatedly without scheduling conflicts.
I don't cold call anymore because of three main issues. First, you often don't get a pickup—if you call 100 people, maybe only 30‑50 actually answer, wasting a lot of time. Second, even when you get past the voicemail, you frequently reach a gatekeeper or front desk instead of the decision maker, and gatekeepers tend to discard your message. Third, after finally reaching the decision maker, they're often busy or give excuses, so you don't get meaningful time with them. Overall, I'd estimate that 80% or more of cold calls are wasted, making it negative leverage—you'd need to make five calls just to get one worthwhile conversation. I much prefer sending Loom videos, which let you convey your message asynchronously and avoid those gatekeeper and pickup problems.
I wouldn’t recommend cold calling today. While it’s cheap to start—just a phone and your voice—the biggest downside is that it’s synchronous, meaning over half of your leads aren’t available when you call, cutting your efficiency in half right away. It also forces you to block time for calls, makes you vulnerable to spam patterns, and requires years of practice to become effective, with most of your time spent talking to unqualified prospects and having to convince them of your credibility. In contrast, asynchronous methods like personalized Loom videos let you work in short windows, avoid the 50% availability loss, and create a reusable asset you can send via email, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. When hyper‑customized, such videos can be seen by about two‑thirds of prospects and generate reply rates around 50 %. Spending an hour a day on Loom outreach can yield five to ten times the results of cold calling. That’s why I’ve shifted from cold email to warm inbound and scaled my agencies, and I advise you to use Loom videos for your SaaS launch.