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How to Build Cold Call Lists?

With a well-crafted cold call list, you can reach your best prospects and get your message across quickly—with a human touch you don’t get with other communication channels. 

But many companies slip up by not getting accurate data for the list—without it, how will you ever get through to the right people?

In this article, we will dive deep into cold call lists—what they are, how to build them, and where to buy them.

Tired of hit-or-miss cold call lists?

Try our 98% accurate mobile data asset—Diamond Data®

Our team manually confirms the accuracy of your prospects' cell phones to ensure they pick up when you call.

Cognism is the leading cold call list provider in EMEA. But did you know we have the best cell phone coverage in the US, too?

Speak to our sales team 

Why does your team need cold call lists?

A cold call list is nothing more than a list of people you are going to cold call, with their contact details and extra relevant information if necessary.

Some providers offer bulk cold calling lists for sale, but it’s better to build custom lists through a B2B platform like Cognism Prospector. It lets you run advanced company and contact searches in its global database to create targeted lists for cold calling. 

When you’ve built an excellent cold call list like this, your outbound sales team (normally your SDRs or BDRs) can simply work their way through the list, moving a decent proportion to the next stage of your sales process.

We interviewed Laura Hayward, Head of Internal CRM and Data at Epik8 about her experience with Cognism.

“Cognism yielded 26% more emails and 54% more cell phones than ZoomInfo and Lusha.

Cognism also provided four types of phone data: mobile, office, HQ and direct dials whereas the other two databases didn’t.

The high coverage of cell phones gives the SDRs the opportunity to spend more time getting through to decision-makers and less time guessing HQ numbers.”

“Overall, we chose Cognism for its fair price point, reliable sales data and seamless integration with HubSpot and its LinkedIn Sales Navigator Extension.”

 

How to get a cold call list?

The most efficient way to get a cold calling list is to create it with a sales prospecting tool like Cognism Prospector. Cognism holds the up-to-date company and B2B contact data and supplies manually verified mobile numbers, direct dials, and email addresses. 

You can use Prospector’s filters to create cold calling lists of prospects that match your criteria. It means you can search the database to find and connect with ideal-fit prospects.

Using the Prospector software, you can filter this data in any way you choose, enabling you to create cold call lists that will power your sales strategy. And there’s no need to worry about data compliance, either - Cognism’s B2B contacts database is fully and globally compliant.

For example, suppose you’re looking for Heads of Marketing in London, operating in the tech sector at a company of over 500 employees with Cognism. In that case, you can get a cold calling list where everyone on it meets that criteria.

Then, it’s up to you and your team to get calling!

If you don’t have access to a sales prospecting platform, you can build cold cal lists manually. But this alternative method is time-consuming, frustrating for the sales team, and prone to errors. It involves cross-checking the lead data in multiple sources—or cold calling company numbers to try to get in touch with your prospect.

Tools like Cognism or ZoomInfo make this process easier and more reliable.

What are the benefits of building cold call lists with prospecting tools?

Having a high-quality list brings many benefits to your sales team, especially compared to buying unverified or non-compliant cold calling lists online.

Here are the benefits that we’ve identified:

  • Cold call lists save time – the hard work of digging up contact details is done for you.
  • A well-targeted list maximizes your chances of success.
  • Lists help salespeople create momentum. They can progress through the list quickly, improving their technique as they go.
  • If your list is well-targeted, you can compose a cold call script that is likely to hit home with everyone on it.
  • You can revisit your list and refresh the data to make sure it’s always up-to-date.

Why is Cognism the right tool to buy cold call lists from?

Better results with fewer calls

  • The largest mobile numbers database
  • NAM, EMEA, and APAC coverage
  • Phone-verified mobile numbers with 98% accuracy and verification service on request
  • Globally compliant lists (GDPR, CPPA, DNC list cleaning)
  • Unrestricted record views and page-level exporting (25 records at a time) to support individual prospecting
  • Supports list-building workflows
  • Focus on integrations with your tech stack, including native integration with Salesforce
Largest mobile numbers database
Global DNC lists check
Phone Verification
Seamless Integrations
Global Coverage

How to get results faster?

diamond data conversations

Save 16 hours per week per rep

Diamond Data® is our manually-verified mobile numbers asset with 98% accuracy. By using it revenue teams can:

  • Reach 5x more people
  • Increase connect rate by 7x
  • Get better results by consuming 80% less data
  • Go through a cold call list in 25% less time

Check out the results our customers have with using our contact data 👇

“Before Cognism, the record number of meetings booked in one day was 26. With Cognism, our record is 30 meetings booked daily, and 33% of these meetings are with C-Suite Executives!”

Read full case study

What data should cold call lists contain?

How much data will be on your cold calling database is up to you, but the minimum information you need is:

It’s often helpful to have their email address and LinkedIn details as well, if you have no luck getting through on the phone.

The more you know about your lead before you call them, the more likely you’ll make a connection. You’ll find it easier to address what you say to the prospect’s situation. You can enrich your cold call database with intent data and sales triggers. 

Thanks to intent data, you can gauge the level of prospect’s interest in what you’re selling and their company’s need for it. It’s beneficial if you’re running account-based marketing campaigns.

Intent data providers can capture prospects’ web searches and the content they consume to indicate their level of interest in a product or service. 

Sales triggers help you prioritize contacts on your list. For example, if the prospect has just been promoted, they may want to make a mark with a new purchase. 

Another useful sales trigger is if the company has just received a new round of funding; this shows that they have an influx of new budgets available and may be looking to spend.

What are the steps for building cold call lists?

The most effective cold call lists are full of the names of people with a problem your product can solve. These people are more likely to be receptive to what you have to say. 

As a result, your list doesn’t have to be long, but it has to be targeted and include good-fit prospects.

Developing your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a great place to start. When you have a clear picture of the kind of person you want to target, it’s much easier to go out and find them. Here’s how you develop your ICP:

  • Analyze your existing customer base and look for common features between your highest-spending users.
  • Look at the industries they operate in. Consider company size, locations, job titles. If you excel at selling to one category of company, you can find others that fit into that category.
  • Talk to your best customers about the challenges they face and how your product helps to resolve them.

Once you have a picture of your dream customer, you can start to search for others just like them in B2B databases.

Cold call lists: key takeaways

  • Building a targeted cold call list allows you to reach prospects who are most likely to convert.
  • It's important to have accurate contact data for the list to ensure you reach the right people.
  • Intent data and sales triggers help you prioritize contacts on your cold calling list.
  • If you want to buy a cold call list online, bear in mind, it can be outdated, incompliant, or inefficient.
  • Over 1800 sales teams worldwide trust Cognism’s compliant B2B data.
  • Our cell phone numbers database helps reduce the time spent on building cold call lists and hitting revenue goals.
  • Cognism Prospector works well with the other sales tools you already have and makes the outbound sales job a lot easier and more efficient.
Let's talk pricing

How does Cognism's pricing work?

Cognism’s pricing model is customized based on your desired workflow.

You’ll need to get in touch with our sales experts to learn accurate pricing info.

 

All packages include:

  • Unrestricted views (subject to generous fair use policy), individual and page-level exporting
  • Contact, firmographic, technographic data, and sales trigger events
  • CRM/sales engagement tool integrations

Additionally, you can add intent data and on-demand cell phone verification to your package.

See why outbound teams choose Cognism

The sales managers used to make 100-150 calls per day. Now they can achieve their targets by making 30 calls per day because they are calling prospects who actually pick up the phone. That’s more results, less calls.
Ultima
George Mckenna, Head of Cloud Sales
8
saw ROI in 8 weeks
70%
achieved target with 70% fewer calls
Read Full Case Study
Cognism’s Diamond Data® is also a game-changer. SDRs are ringing real mobile numbers which means they’re getting in front of the right people and aren’t wasting any time calling dead numbers.
THG Ingenuity Cloud Services
Stevie Howlett, Head of Global Sales Development
99.6%
decrease in list building time (from 7 days to 15 minutes)
Read Full Case Study
You don’t need to be tech-savvy to use the platform and it seamlessly integrates into the tools you’re using already. Best of all, it delivers fast results. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it
GWI
Joshua Silvera, Director of Sales Development
90%
reduction in lead list generation time
Read Full Case Study
I generate the data in the WebApp on behalf of the BDMs using the staffing and RPO intent topics. In the search, I can see what topics are surging alongside the surge number. Once I've refined the contacts according to their surge number, I sync the lists into our Bullhorn CRM and assign the contacts from each vertical to an individual BDM. The BDM will then contact the desired prospects within the surging accounts with a personalised message.
Kelly Services
UK Sales Enablement Lead
28K
contacts generated with intent data
Read Full Case Study
With Cognism, we have reduced list building time from between 5 and 7 days to only 15 minutes
THG Ingenuity Cloud Services
Stevie Howlett, Head of Global Sales Development
99.5%
decrease in list building time (from 7 days to 15 minutes)
Read Full Case Study