Digital Social Hour
Peter Roth: Why Cold Calling Is Stronger Than Ever in 2025 | DSH #1650
01 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: Why is cold calling still relevant in 2025?
I always say the same thing. Relationships are number one. If you go through life where the relationship is the most important thing, the money will always follow suit. People will throw money at you if you bring them more. How hard is that? If I make you more than I charge you, you'll never stop giving me money. Provide a good value. Yeah, there you go.
Provide a good service.
People overthink it. That's the basis of a sale. A sale is like if value exceeds price, a sale is made. That's it.
yeah if you can help people make more money it's always the easiest thing to sell right because your numbers will talk for themselves your history will speak but people focus on the wrong things I think well I think when you're younger you generally tend to do that right because you need the money real bad 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 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.
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?
Your team take a lot of calls today?
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Chapter 2: How does desperation impact sales opportunities?
TCPA banned that in February of 2024. Wow. You can't use AI to... For cold calling. Okay. You can use it like once you've got... Once you got opt-in, it's like if someone already agreed to get your messaging or whatever. Yeah, that's cool. Got it. And you should do that then. I'm pro-AI, by the way. I'm not anti-AI. I'm super pro.
But yeah, you just can't use it for cold calling and stuff like that.
Got it.
Yeah, if you want people out there like an army of phone calls going out there booking appointments for whatever business you're in. Yeah, you're stuck with humans.
And it's a good thing. I feel like some of the voicemails I get are from AI, though.
Oh, I bet. No, people are flagrantly breaking laws every day. I don't think there's anything new. I'm not shocking anybody with that, right? But like, yeah, that happens all the time. Yeah, I mean, FCC is cracking down on it hard.
Oh, yeah.
Well, they have to because, 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, there would be, like, smoke coming out. Because, I mean, cell phone tires would be on fire. You know, there would be so many calls coming.
Dude, I will never sign up for a business funding offer ever again. I get 10 voicemails a day. Oh, yeah. And you can't get off. You can't. Even when you block them, they got a new number.
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Chapter 3: What makes Peter Roth's call center unique?
It doesn't matter.
They'll find out. Yeah. They're just cycling through them. Yeah. For sure.
Crazy. That's a really good thing that they banned AI because a lot of people like a common misconception is that people think like, you know, it's cold calling dead, you know. And that's a huge misconception because it's actually stronger than ever now because of AI. AI actually kind of like solidified a place in the world for cold calling because they've banned AI.
It means now they're reducing the amount of junk and noise that's coming through to your phone. Because if they were to open it up, well, then could you imagine the amount of garbage? Oh, my God. Just enough garbage you get now, right? Could you imagine the sheer amount of garbage you'd get then? Yeah. Right.
So because they took those measures and have blocked that garbage and that noise from coming through, now it leaves room for legitimate companies to actually still cold call homeowners and businesses or whatever and actually present them with a legitimate offer. So if you're in that type of business, good for you.
You can actually still operate because there is still room in the world for legitimate, honest cold calling.
It's a great point because I probably take an hour a day in my email just sending shit to spam or deleting.
Don't even. You're giving me like PTSD.
Cleaning my email. Every morning I get like at least 50.
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Chapter 4: Why was AI cold calling banned?
Cold emails work really well for me. Do they really? Yeah, I'm generating six figures a month just off cold email.
That's outstanding.
I love to hear that.
And it's legal. It's legal, yeah. Why the hell not? But you just need good quality. You need good leads. Yeah, you need good leads and you need people who know how to do it right.
Good closers.
You need good closers, but you also need people who can run the software for you. I'm assuming you don't do it yourself, right? You've got probably help.
I know how to do it, but yeah, I've got people helping me. There's actually pretty cheap software these days. We use Instantly. Instantly, for sure. Does Instantly do calls or no?
No.
Oh, they don't? So that's a separate software? Yeah. Yeah, they're good for email though. They even warm up your emails. So you don't go to spam. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, so shout out to them. They don't even sponsor. I just generally find value in their service.
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Chapter 5: What factors contribute to the strength of cold calling today?
No speakers. That's really smart. Yeah. So I do that for cold email. Sometimes I'll do it for the podcast if I'm in a certain city. 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.
That's so smart.
Yeah. You could get really targeted with it. You could do job titles, revenue, number of employees.
Yeah. We've tinkered around with like Apollo and stuff like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Apollo's decent. I use that one too.
What else do you use?
The best list one. I don't know if they sell numbers. I think they do sell numbers. It's listkit.io because they triple verify their leads. Okay. Yeah. And I test open rates and stuff. I've tested Apollo instantly. We're getting really nerdy right now.
Barely anyone's going to understand. But it's fine. It's fine.
I love nerding out. And ListKit has the best open rates. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Okay, you'll have to. We'll talk out there, yeah. Yeah, for sure. But what's the main offer you're pushing now? I'm sure you've got a ton of good stories selling cold call offers.
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Chapter 6: How have FCC regulations changed cold calling practices?
I totally, totally, totally agree with you. If it doesn't have that potential, then why even waste a single minute? 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... crazy offers.
I don't do crazy anything. I just do one thing. Yeah. Just, you know, I talked 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 can 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 is easy.
Yeah. Yep, you're absolutely right.
Yeah, definitely round that up. So you basically approach these companies and you help them build a call center so they can sell their services more.
I don't even approach them. They come to me, thankfully.
Oh, wow. Word of mouth.
Knock on some wood. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Mostly just word of... Oh, and talking to guys like you. Yeah. So I mean, thankfully now I'm in a place where I don't really have to do too much advertising really anymore. I do very, very little of it. So now most people just kind of tend to find me through the usual channels and through reputation and through...
treating people right and not screwing up too bad here. Just treat people right and be committed to their success. I always say the same thing. Relationships are number one. If you go through life where the relationship is the most important thing, the money will always follow suit. People will throw money at you if you bring them more money. How hard is that?
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Chapter 7: What strategies differentiate targeted calls from mass dialing?
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 large sales organization in the world of solar. R.I.P. Solar.
Yeah, that was a bubble, huh?
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 that'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...
you know, how many people here, it was a home services-based event, and I said, how many people by show of hands here are in solar? And quite a few people, and so they raised their hand.
And I was like, so you guys won't know exactly what I mean when I say this, but I go, if I was standing, if I was sitting in a room full of 100 random people, not business owners, just random people, and it was kind of one of those free-flowing conscious, what's that term, where you just, I say a word and then you say a word back, what's that?
You know what I mean? I know what you're talking about.
So if I said the word solar, there's a really strong chance about a third of you people in this audience right now would be like, solar is a scam. Right? It's like a third of the audience would yell back. Now, if I did the same thing and I just said air conditioning, ain't no one going to be like, air conditioning is a scam.
No one.
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Chapter 8: How can businesses effectively utilize data lists for outreach?
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.
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. For sure. You know, for a long time.
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. 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 things and fundraising side of things. Because it's the same thing. They need more donors. Just cold outreach. And again, they're not used to it. So once what was old is now new again. 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.
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