cold call
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cold call
1. verb To make an unsolicited phone call or visit to a person or business, usually to sell something. I've never been hung up on so much in my life—these people I'm cold calling just are not interested in my spiel. Hey, no one has yelled at me today! That's a true highlight when you cold call all day long. We can have the interns cold call potential advertisers—don't worry, we'll keep 'em busy down here.
2. noun Such a phone call or visit. Time to make cold calls to the people in this building now. A: "It takes a special kind of person to make cold calls all day." B: "You mean because no one is happy to hear from them?" A: "Exactly." If you get any cold calls while I'm out, just tell them we're not interested.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
cold call
tv. to call a sales prospect from a list of persons one has never met. Things have to be pretty bad when the senior brokers at a major house have to cold call people to get business.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
cold call
A telephone call, most often a sales call, made to someone who is not known to the caller and who is not expecting a call. Often generated by computerized lists of phone numbers, cold calls are considered a major annoyance, so much so that the U.S. government has set up “don’t call” lists to which one may subscribe. The term dates from the second half of the 1900s.
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer