How to Cold Call Without Burning Out
There's a real risk of burnout when cold calling : here are my tips to avoid it
4/4/20263 min read
How to Cold Call Without Burning Out
You don't always realize it at the time, but B2B prospecting, and particularly B2B cold calling, can generate a significant amount of stress.
It's somewhat insidious because you don't necessarily feel intensely stressed while making cold calls. However, over time, it can significantly increase your body's overall stress levels and potentially contribute to depression or burnout.
That's exactly what happened to me after a year of freelancing in B2B cold calling, with some serious consequences for my health.
Without going into too much detail, I started feeling cold all the time, even when the weather was warm (including during summer). I was also experiencing significant fatigue, particularly after certain physical activities.
Because these symptoms were so unusual, persistent, and out of the ordinary, I even spent several weeks thinking I might have developed a lifelong disability, such as chronic fatigue syndrome.
Since then, I've implemented several measures that could be particularly useful for anyone looking to sustain their prospecting efforts over the long term without physically burning themselves out.
Finding the Right Balance and Staying Consistent
The stress generated by prospecting isn't necessarily extremely intense, but if you're doing it throughout the entire day, five days a week, it can eventually have a real impact on your body.
There are several ways to address this.
1. Use a Parallel Dialer
There are various B2B tools available to improve your prospecting efficiency.
A parallel dialer allows you to call several people simultaneously, significantly reducing the time spent dialing numbers that never answer.
You might not realize it, but in many markets, at least 50–75% of your prospecting time is spent doing exactly that: calling people who don't pick up.
Even the dialing process itself generates stress, because you're constantly anticipating the possibility that someone might answer at any moment.
Using a parallel dialer can therefore reduce the time required for prospecting by half, or even two-thirds, which can also significantly reduce the overall stress associated with the activity.
2. Don't Cold Call Every Day
Cold calling five days a week is actually too much for many people.
When you're cold calling, you go through a whole range of emotions: uncertainty, fear of not booking meetings, self-doubt, guilt, and so on.
On the other hand, you also experience adrenaline rushes. You feel strong, powerful, victorious, completely in the zone, and so on.
Basically, cold calling is an emotional roller coaster, with plenty of highs and lows every single day.
Riding that roller coaster five days a week isn't necessarily a good idea.
I imagine everyone has their own limits. Without the right mindset, it can sometimes be difficult just to make a single prospecting call.
Personally, I started experiencing my first physical symptoms when I reached the point of having clients booking me five days a week (one day per week per client).
Working four days a week instead leaves you with three days without cold calling to decompress and recover.
3. Exercise Intensively on a Regular Basis
When you're cold calling, you're completely focused on the present moment. Tension builds up without you necessarily realizing it.
Once the session is over, that accumulated tension doesn't simply disappear on its own.
If you don't find a way to release that tension relatively quickly, if your body never gets a chance to unwind, it can build up over time and seriously affect your health.
That's exactly what happened to me.
Personally, I now do at least one hour of intensive exercise every day, and even more on my days off, to help release all that accumulated tension.
Cold showers can also help in this respect, although I'd recommend avoiding them during winter!
Conclusion
By using a parallel dialer, limiting cold calling to four days a week rather than five, and exercising regularly, you can maintain good cold calling performance over the long term while reducing the risk of burning yourself out.
And if you don't feel like going into the trenches yourself or riding that emotional roller coaster, you can always outsource your B2B prospecting to an experienced professional.