Peter Roth: Why Cold Calling Is Stronger Than Ever in 2025 | DSH #1650

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Now you can really just focus on the core value of what makes you a good human, which is just being a good goddamn human. Just don't be a dick. Yeah. All right, guys, back in the studio. We got Peter Roth here today. He owns a call center. So we're going to talk about cold calling and what's new in the call center business, man. How's it going? I'm doing really good, man. How about you? Yeah?

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Your team take a lot of calls today? Probably 50 to 100,000, I'm guessing. Damn, that many?

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Well, they have to, because it's, you know, I mean, I joke about this on every podcast I ever go on, but it's like, if they were to legalize that, your phone right now, would there be, like, smoke coming out? Because, I mean, cell phone tires would be on fire. You know, there'd be so many calls coming. Dude, I will never sign up for a business funding offer ever again. I get 10 voicemails a day.

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Oh, yeah. And you can't get off of it. You can't. Even when you block them, they got a new number.

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You can actually still operate, because there is still room in the world for legitimate, honest cold calling. That's a great point, because I'd probably take an hour a day in my email just sending shit to spam or deleting them. Don't even. You're giving me PTSD cleaning my email. Every morning, I get at least 50.

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That's the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning because I have to reduce stress and anxiety. So the first thing I do is get rid of all the junk. Yeah, same here. Yeah, we're the same. Yeah, it's nuts. So I hope my point being is I hope calls don't get to that point ever. Well, that's my point, right? As long as they don't change, which I don't see why they would.

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then there is still a place in this world, or at least in this country, for honest businesses to keep that method of outreach. Is the cold calling, because you mentioned you're doing like 100,000 calls a day, is that pretty strategic outreach, or are you just going for the masses on that? No, no, it's always strategic.

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I mean, you can, I guess, theoretically take the shotgun approach, but we're far more surgical than that. And as anyone should be, like if anyone is listening to this right now and they're contemplating like, hey, maybe I want to build my own call center. I mean, you should try. That's always a good idea. But yes, you should always take like the more surgical approach.

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Just, you know, blasting, just, you know, doing the whole like, you know, throwing and see what sticks to the wall methodology. It can work, but you'll burn through a lot of money real fast. I mean, data ain't cheap.

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So if I'm filming in like Miami, I'll email entrepreneurs that are making 10 mil plus a year in revenue to come on the show. So I'll send that blast out, get fill up guests for three days straight, you know, in and out.

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I've got people who come to me with really, really great business ideas, but I literally have to just reject I'm the same way. Because if it's not going to bring in seven figures, I mean, why dedicate the time and effort? I totally, totally, totally agree with you. If it doesn't have that potential, then why even waste a single minute?

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You know, I look at everything like I look at it as a marriage now, pretty much. So for every relationship, every business venture, everything has to have like basically a hundred year lifespan. Yeah. So yeah, it's the same thing. But yeah, so now I don't do

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crazy offers i don't do crazy anything i just do one thing yeah just you know i talk to companies who can see the benefit of you know having a call center built out for them and can get their sales reps into homes or in you know in meetings with company owners or whoever they want to be talking to got it yeah i think cold email would crush for you dude probably i think you could land a lot of clients because you already have the track record which is the tough part you built the business out you got proven companies you've worked with yeah you know that's the hard part the email part's easy yeah

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Yep, you're absolutely right. Yeah, definitely round that up.

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Well, I think when you're younger, you generally tend to do that, right? Cause you need the money real bad. And you know, I think maybe this comes from a place of, I don't want to say privilege, but maybe that's the best way to put it. But like,

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Maybe it is coming from a place of privilege and or just maybe accomplishment where when you're younger, you don't have the fortune of being there yet necessarily. And so you're still you have to put food on the table and desperate people do desperate things. And unfortunately, they're generally not good. And so when you resort to desperate measures, then we all know where that leads you.

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So then you get to the point in your life where you've already built those relationships and you're not chasing money anymore because you're already living somewhat comfortably. Now you can really just focus on the core value of what makes you a good human, which is just being a good goddamn human. Just don't be a dick, right? And everything will be basically fine. For sure.

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When did this start taking off for you? Have you been in the call center industry for a while? Not selling them the way that I do now. So I got into the call center space kind of by accident. I sort of fell into it because I was running a sales, a large sales organization in the world of solar, RIP solar. Yeah, that was a bubble, huh?

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I mean it's still there but it's definitely – There's only so many roofs in the world, right? Well, the funny thing is that's not the problem. It's not the market. Oh, really? It's the problem. It's the value. It's the perception. I was on stage in Austin last week. I was talking to a room full of people and I go,

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So that's why mailers are now working again because people are like actually open and like, oh, I haven't received a mailer in a long time. Let me actually open this one. I do open a lot of mailers, actually. Isn't that interesting? 20 years ago, you probably didn't. 15, 20 years ago, it was piled up because that's what everyone did. Yeah, they're getting good at making them appealing, too.

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Yeah, but now the equivalent is Facebook ads. Right now, that's the equivalent of a mailer. So it's like, isn't that interesting how the tables have turned? Now it's Facebook ads because those are super saturated and with a shit ton of scammy offers. So now people aren't paying attention to that. So now they're back to the old school stuff. Call centers have been trued and tested, I feel like.

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For sure. You know, for a long time, right? For sure. They'll never even, you know, like Ryan Panetta. Love you, by the way. Even like Ryan Panetta is like anti-call centers. And I'd love to, I'll chat with you one day. But he thinks it's a dying channel, and I totally disagree. But yeah, there's a huge opportunity, I think, for companies.

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Or it's actually, we work with a lot of fundraisers and charities and stuff like that. And that's a huge new area that we're about to crack into, is kind of the whole charity side of thing and fundraising side of thing. Because it's the same thing, right? They need more donors, right? Just cold outreach. Yeah. And again, they're not used to it. So once what was old is now new again.

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So now there's a huge opportunity in that space. That's smart. And they got massive lead lists too, I bet. And they're really good at that kind of stuff too. They already have that stuff. Dude, I donated once to save the children. Not to put them on blast, but I get a mailer, I get texts, I get emails. Yeah. Like once a week at least. Isn't it interesting how good of a business they run though?