Contents
“Cold calling is easy! All you need is a phone and a list of prospects with their phone number – a cold calling list.”
If only it actually was that easy to build one…
It’s hard, yes, but not impossible – I am here to guide you and show you how you can consistently build quality cold-calling lists.
In addition to that, I will also give you insights on various other things like:
- What are the main elements your list should have
- Insider tips and insights.
- And, answer a number of FAQs that I have gotten over the years.
This is going to be more like a complete guide/all you need to know.
So, grab a cup of coffee and dive in!
Cold Calling List: TOC
- What Is a Cold Calling List?
- What Elements Should a Cold Calling List Contain?
- Easy Ways to Build a Cold Calling List
- Tips You Should Know When Building a Cold Calling List
- Build Your B2B Contact List and Start Cold Calling!
- Cold Calling List: FAQs
What Is a Cold Calling List?
To keep it simple – a cold calling list is a list of people you will connect with through the phone to get them interested in your offering.
A good cold calling list will contain only those prospects who might be actively seeking the solutions you offer.
Moreover, to build such a list, you’ll need two prerequisites: an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and thoroughly researched Buyer Personas.
Okay, before I show you how to find someone’s phone number, there’s one important thing you need to know.
You should first understand exactly what to include in your list.
What Elements Should a Cold Calling List Contain?
A cold call list isn’t just about names and numbers.
For your list to be effective for you and your team, it should contain comprehensive information about your prospects.
Here’s what I recommend you include in your list:
- Demographic Information:
- Name
- Contact number
- Job title
- Educational background
- Firmographic Information:
- Company name
- Industry
- Revenue
- Number of employees
- Tech stack details
- Product-Market Fit:
- Company pain points
- Possible buying objections
- Recent company updates
- Intent information
- Additional Comments: Any other relevant information that can help you create a personalized sales pitch for the prospect.
Next let’s see how you can build such a list for your needs.
Easy Ways to Build a Cold Calling List
We have finally come to the main focus of the blog.
I will now share with you 2 methods that you can use to build your calling list.
I’ll also show you how the process and share the pros and cons of each method.
So, let’s get started.
1. Using a B2B Database
This is the method that I recommend everyone try and follow.
Why?
With a B2B business database you get access to millions of professionals from across the globle along with their contact information.
Let me show you some of the benefits of using a professional platform to build your cold calling list.
Pros of Using a B2B Contact Database
- You can save a lot of time and effort as you can prospect in bulk and create highly segmented lists in a matter of minutes.
- You can uncover niche prospects in the B2B market.
- Some platforms double as company research tools, providing extra details like company revenue, growth metrics, and recent updates, which makes it easier to personalize your pitch.
- A lot of reputable databases comply with privacy laws like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, meaning they follow strict guidelines to ensure you’re contacting people legally and ethically.
- These platforms also integrate well with CRM tools, making it easy to organize your leads and follow up efficiently.
These are just some of the many benefits of using a platform purpose build for finding contact information.
As I have showed you the pros it’s only right if I showed the downside as well.
Cons of Using a B2B Contact Database
- You’ll have to pay to use these platforms. (Of course they don’t come free)
- Occasionally you may come across outdated data. This is expected as people change jobs or phone more regularly than expected.
- You can easily become overwhelmed with the amount of information, slowing down your outreach.
- With numerous B2B databases available, it can be challenging to find the right one that fits your budget and business needs.
With the pros and cons out of the way, let me show you how easy it is to use a B2B data provider to quickly build targeted cold calling lists.
How to Build a Cold Calling List Using a B2B Contact Database:
- You can sign-up to a B2B contact data provider like Saleshandy Lead Finder.
- Then narrow down your search on the right prospects by using various advanced filters like industry, location, company revenue, employee count, etc.
- After you have a pinpointed your prospects you can bulk reveal up to 10,000 contacts at once.
- After revealing you can save and export the list with all their information via CSV file or to a CRM platform.
Simple and elegant, isn’t it!
Next, let me show you the other method, which takes a lot of manual effort.
2. Manual Prospecting
The second method is a bit tedious and time-consuming, but it will get the job done if you’re under budget constraints.
Before seeing how it can be done, here’s a quick look at the pros and cons.
Pros of Manual Prospecting:
- Cost-effective way of building a B2B contact list.
- You get to dictate the direction of the search.
- Inspires sales and marketing alignment as your teams have to work together to come up with a list of prospects.
Cons of Manual Prospecting:
- Since you have to search for phone numbers one by one, it is not suited to building large cold calling lists.
- You might not find the phone numbers altogether, especially if they’re not listed online.
With that out of the way, I will show you how you can spend a lot of time and effort to do something that would just take you mins with a database platform.
(Yes, the sarcasm was intentional.)
How to Build a Cold Calling List Using Manual Prospecting:
While there are several ways to find your prospects’ phone numbers, two of them have stood out to me because of their simplicity:
1. Search in LinkedIn
The most efficient way (although tedious) is to use go over to LinkedIn to search and find prospects matching your ICP.
You can also take the help of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which can help fasten the process a lot.
(But, it comes with a costly price tag)
After that you can use LinkedIn extension platforms that can go over your list and reveal the contact informtion of your prospects.
This works if you’re planning to take a multichannel approach where you’re reaching out to prospects on LinkedIn and through cold calls.
But if cold calling is the one and only way, then i highly suggest you stick with the first method.
2. Â Search for Phone Numbers Online
The second option is to simply perform a Google search and see if you can find your prospect’s contact information.Â
If you’re lucky, you’ll get an exact match, and you’ll be good to go.
In the worst-case scenario, you might find at least a corporate number you can use to get your foot in the door.
Note: Take a free trial of Saleshandy Lead Finder and you can effectively save 10+ hrs a week.
As you may have noticed, manual prospecting can be quite a hassle, especially if you want to build a niche or large B2B contact database.
It can also be tedious if you or your sales team has to build cold calling lists every time a sales cycle ends and another begins.
Thankfully, there’s a great alternative you’ve got.
My recommendation: If you have to build a B2B contact list with 50+ contacts, you should explore an affordable B2B prospecting tool.
In my experience, the cost more than offsets the time it takes to manually find contact numbers.
Tips You Should Know When Building a Cold Calling List
Now that you know how to build a cold calling list, it’s time I shared some tips and tricks I learnt over the years.
These tips will help you become more efficient and effective:
- Build and Refine Your ICP and Buyer Personas
- Double-Check Direct Dials
- Make Potential Buying Objections a Part of the List
- Limit the Number of Prospects in Your List
1. Build and Refine Your ICP and Buyer Personas
As we have seen earlier, creating a highly targeted Ideal Customer Profile is critical to building a good cold calling database.
This is especially important if you’re using a B2B lead database.
The reason is simple: once you’ve armed yourself with a very specific ICP, you can easily use advanced search filters to find prospects who align with your product or service.
In essence, a good ICP is a cheat sheet for building a cold call list.
2. Double-Check Direct Dials
Inaccurate direct dials can cost your sales reps a lot of time and effort.
Trust me, from the years I’ve spent in the sales segment, I know how annoying it can be to connect with a person only to find out that the number is inaccurate or that it doesn’t work at all.
Thankfully, you can address this problem in two ways:
If you’re working with a small cold calling list, I recommend using a reverse lookup tool to verify the accuracy of your prospects’ direct dials.
On the other hand, if you have a large B2B contact list, try using a data enrichment tool to clean it and regularly update the direct dials.
3. Make Potential Buying Objections a Part of the List
One reason cold calling lists are ineffective is that your sales rep might not be aware of your prospect’s buying objections.
For instance, they may not be aware of your competitive advantage over the solution they’re currently using.
Buying objections are critical to B2B sales cycles: they can drastically reduce the length of your cold call, thereby reducing your chances of booking a meeting.
The best way to overcome this challenge is to include “buying objections” as a criterion in your cold call list.
This way, your sales reps can anticipate how to deal with tough questions during the cold call.
4. Limit the Number of Prospects in Your List
There are two approaches you can take to build a cold calling database.
The first is to include every potential lead and call to try to convert them all. This might lead to a drawn-out sales cycle and cost a lot of resources.
The second is to take a more concentrated approach. It involves prioritizing the prospects that most closely exhibit product-market fit.
My suggestion: Take the second approach: rank your prospects and include only 50 or 100 contacts per sales cycle.
This will help you strategize your resources and allocate more time to building hyper-personal sales pitches.
Build Your B2B Contact List and Start Cold Calling!
Cold calling is much easier if you have the right numbers of the right people. In our discussion, we’ve explored both of these problems.
To recap, there are two ways of building cold calling lists.Â
The first involves using a B2B contact database to filter companies based on your ICP and then reveal their contact information.
A lead finder tool is very convenient as it helps you integrate prospecting with finding your leads’ direct dials.
The second method is manual prospecting, which lets you direct the flow of company research but can be time-consuming if you’re building large lists.
From my personal experience, I suggest you try a prospecting platform.
It’ll save you a lot of time and effort, which you can redirect to building personalized cold call scripts that lead to conversion.
Good luck!
Cold Calling List: FAQs
1. What is the Best Way to Build a Cold Calling List in 2025?
In my experience, the best way to build a cold calling list is to use a B2B lead database. Such tools are designed to help you narrow down a list of company profiles and professional contacts that match your ICP and buyer persons.
They also provide you with accurate direct dials of your prospects. You can also directly export your prospects’ direct dials to a CRM or a CSV file.
2. What Data Should I Include in a Cold Calling List?
A good cold-calling list includes the following information on prospects:
- Demographics: Name, contact information, job profile, and educational background.
- Firmographics: Company name, industry, location, LinkedIn profile and tech stack.
- Product-Market Fit: Pain points and recent updates shared by the company.
- Additional Comments: Any useful information that can help you personalize your sales script.
3. Where to Buy a Cold Calling List in 2025?
From my research, I’ve found that there are five great tools where you can buy business contact lists:
- Saleshandy Lead Finder: 700M+ professional contacts; pricing starts at $49/Month.
- Lead411: 450M+ professional contacts; pricing starts at $75/User/Month.
- Cognism: 10M+ accurate direct dials with Diamond Data. Custom pricing.
- UpLead: 160M+ professional contacts; pricing starts at $99/Month.
- ZoomInfo: 260M+ professional contacts; custom pricing (enterprise-level tool.)
4. What are the Best Tools to Build a Cold Calling List?
In my experience, I’ve found three types of tools that are best suited to building a cold calling list:
- B2B Contact Database: Use a database like Lead Finder which has advanced filters to search for prospects that match your ICP and reveal their phone numbers. You can then export the contacts to a CRM or via a CSV file.
- Data Scrapers: Another option is a Chrome Extension which scrapes direct dials from LinkedIn profiles and websites.
- Chrome Prospectors: The last option is Chrome extensions, which don’t have their own database but help you find phone numbers of contacts from LinkedIn or corporate websites.
5. How to Verify Phone Numbers on a Cold Call List?
If you’ve manually compiled a cold call list, there are two ways in which you can verify the phone numbers:
- Use a reverse lookup tool and input the phone numbers one by one to see if they are accurate. This method is slow but cost-effective. If you have less than 50 contacts to verify, I suggest you go with this option.
- Input all the phone numbers into a CSV file and use a data enrichment service to clean your cold-calling list. You might have to pay for such a service, but I recommend it for large cold-calling lists as it will save you valuable time.
