To Cold Call or Not to Cold Call

I’m not sure how you feel about cold calling, but I feel getting 2-4 new listings from knocking on only 20 doors worth the stinking effort.

Of course, if you don’t like to cold call, it never hurts to enlist the help of a simple sign rider. Sign riders could triple that number.

Besides, cold calling seems…well, ancient?…in this age of the social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies and the new marketplace conversation, what some call Web 2.0.

What do you think?

I know that I’ve been saying cold calling is dead for a long, long time…but does Web 2.0 drive the stake through the heart of cold calling?

Or is there still a place in real estate for cold calling?

Does a strategy of approaching the ten houses to the left and the ten houses to the right really constitute cold calling?

I mean, you have a warm opening in the sense that you can approach the neighbor and say “Hey, I’m helping your neighbor Linda sell her house, and I was just wondering….”

What do you think?