What once constituted a “cold lead” to call can’t be getting any warmer.

I get at least a dozen cold-calls a week at work, companies pitching their offshore solutions, their enterprise software packages, all their solutions wrapped in horoscope relevance.

My message to them is: stop bothering. I don’t answer my phone. I don’t listen to more than 4 seconds of the phone message. These people will never get me in a live phone conversation. Am I alone in this? Or is the once “cold-call” getting colder?

Of course it’s challenging to find good data on the effectiveness of cold-call tactics, because half the marketing companies that cite studies are trying to tell you how it’s not nearly as effective as their own guerilla marketing tactics, and the other half are trying to tell you how cold-calling can juice your sales overnight. I wish all those people would just stop bothering too.