I think it really depends on your approach. In my case, I generate around 2000 subscribers through the Internet every month, so trying to reach all those people by phone unless you have a large telemarketing room would be absolutely impossible.
For me the first contact would be email and there really is a qualification process. A lot of people get on my email list and find that they don’t really want what I have to offer them, so they choose not to participate. Really, it’s okay; If you’ve been in sales, you know it’s not necessarily about how good your product is, but how well you can communicate how good your product is to the very people who need it.
If you are talking to people who don’t need you, then you are really wasting your time. It doesn’t matter how good your sales pitch is, so I really use email to rate people and see who really wants to learn more, and then we can get you on the phone.
The email process allows me to pre-qualify before receiving them by phone. You see, I spend a few hundred dollars a month on aweber, and some days they send me like 20,000 emails, and it takes me like 5 minutes to queue that email every day, but if I talk on the phone and spend an hour with someone – That costs me. I only have about 30 hours a week that I can spend on the phone, so I want to be absolutely sure that if I’m on the phone with someone, they are qualified to speak to me.
If you don’t qualify as prospects before you call them on the phone, you’re probably not making as many or as many sales as you should. There are really easy ways to automate the prequalification process using aweber or other autoresponders.