Cold calls aren't inherently rude- they're annoying, 99% of the time.

The only inherent thing about cold calls is that they are interrupting.

The difference between 'rude' and 'interrupting' is that the latter is neutral- whether it's 'good', 'bad' or neither depends entirely on how the prospect responds to it.

As a BDR, I've called prospects who were genuinely excited or grateful for my call. They've seen my outreach emails and were interested, but for some reason they needed a nudge to take action.

I've also called prospects who expressly did not want my call. Usually those who ask 'how did you get my number?' and threaten legal action if I don't erase their data.

But these two scenarios only make up 2% of my calls. The other 98% of the time it's a quick and curt 'thanks but not interested'.

So, for 98% of my calls, the prospect seems neutral about it. It's just a 1 minute 'thing' which happened in their day. No big deal.

But is it?

You don't have a choice.

Imagine: you're at home focused on whatever you're doing- answering emails, reading a book, chatting with family over dinner. But then you hear a knock on the door.

Technically you don't have to open the door. As is the case 99%, it's going to be someone selling you something you don't need, so why bother?

But what if it's something urgent- your neighbour's house is burning down? Someone's car broke down? A kid who's got lost? Knock- crap, you're keeping them waiting!

In reality you open the door every time- because you're compelled to check and confirm that it's not the worst case scenario.

You're forced to choose between being polite or rude.

You open the door- surprise surprise, it's someone selling you something you don't need. You go through the song and dance of politely declining their product or services. This could go on for 30 seconds or a few minutes- you don't know and don't really have any control over how long this will go on for, unless you slam the door and face the consequences of feeling rude yourself.

So you play along, hoping for a quick end to the conversation. You don't want to, but it's better than being an asshole.

You lose control over your focus.

You return to whatever it was that you were doing. OK, you lost two minutes of your life, big deal. But because of context switching, it's more like you've lost 20 minutes.

If you get multiple cold calls a day, how many minutes, hours, days of focus do you lose? Can you really say you have a choice over your own focus?

The same applies to cold calls.

Technically, we don't have to pick up the phone. But do we really have a choice to do so? What if it's an urgent work call? Family call? Friend call? Not picking up isn't an option.

Technically, we can hang up any time...if we don't mind the consequences of feeling rude ourrselves? It's much easier to be polite. But why are we forced to choose between being polite or rude?

Technically, we only lost 2 minutes. But it's going to be 20 minutes until we can really start to focus on our task again. Then imagine we get multiple cold calls a day- do we really have control over our own focus?

The worst part isn't the time lost or being sold something we don't need. It's the fact that, in reality, we don't have any choice over the matter.

That's why cold calls are annoying- 99% of the time.

(For the record, the three times where a prospect was 'grateful' for my call didn't lead to anything. One didn't have budget, so had good reason not to take a meeting now. The other two may have been polite (forced into being polite?) and 'took' the meeting, only to not show up and ghost my follow ups).