Cold-2-Warm™ Outbound Prospecting
Stop letting your sellers
cold call into the void.
Only 1-3% of your prospects are ready to buy today. Which means 97% of every cold call and cold email your sellers make is aimed at someone who doesn’t want to hear from them. Your sellers are in a drone war. Most are still being handed muskets.
Cold-2-Warm™ is a done-with-you prospecting system that teaches your sales organization how to warm prospects before a seller ever picks up the phone. It replaces cold calls and cold emails with a coordinated, multi-channel outreach cadence built around your most desirable prospects — so when a seller reaches out, they’re following up on something the prospect has already seen, not interrupting their day. We build the system. Your team runs it. The result is more meetings with better prospects, and fewer hours burned on outreach that goes nowhere.
When does a sales organization need Cold-2-Warm™?
A few of the symptoms we see most often:
Sellers are burning hours on cold calls and cold emails that go nowhere
Your team’s outreach is all phone, all email — no coordinated multi-channel campaign
Top prospects don’t recognize your firm when sellers finally reach them
Your best sellers have a hidden process you can’t replicate across the team
New hires take 9-12 months to ramp because there’s no documented prospecting system
You’re hiring “hunters” expecting them to figure out prospecting on their own
Most sales teams only work one corner of the outreach map.
Every outreach effort lives in one of four zones, defined by two questions: Do they already know you? and Are you reaching one person or many?
Most sales teams default to the top-right quadrant — cold outreach to people who don’t know them. It’s the hardest path. The prospect has no context, no familiarity, and no reason to take the call. And remember: only 1-3% of those prospects are ready to buy today. The other 97% delete the email, ignore the call, or worse — flag your seller as the kind of vendor they never want to hear from again.
Cold-2-Warm™ is the methodology that moves prospects out of that top-right quadrant before any seller picks up the phone. Targeted advertising and direct mail (bottom-right) introduces your firm to prospects who don’t know you yet, in a way that doesn’t require their attention immediately. Educational content and lead magnets (bottom-left) deepens familiarity. By the time a seller makes the one-to-one outreach call (top-left), the prospect already knows the name, has seen the message, and is far more likely to engage.
The system uses all four zones in sequence. Your sellers stop cold-calling into the void — because by the time they reach out, the prospect isn’t cold anymore.
Why trust Nichols & Associates to build our prospecting system?
B2B Focus
We focus exclusively on B2B sales organizations.
We work with companies where a sale requires multiple meetings, multiple stakeholders, and a real relationship — professional services, technology, telecom, media, sponsorship, financial services, and similar. The fundamentals of appointment generation don’t change category to category, but the bar for credibility does. We’ve built ours by selling in this lane ourselves.
The Book
We wrote the book — literally.
White Collar Prospecting is the foundation of how we think about new business development for B2B sales organizations. The premise: most salespeople are good enough at selling — the real problem is getting in front of the right prospects in the first place. The Cold-2-Warm™ methodology you’ll find on these pages is built from the same playbook.
Both Sides
We’ve sat on both sides of the table.
We’ve managed major TV advertising campaigns and pitched some of the largest brands in the country, including Coca-Cola. We know what makes a buyer take a meeting, what gets a proposal binned, and why the incumbent usually wins the room. That perspective is what your sellers are missing — and what we’ll surface as we build your system.
25
New sponsors
signed in one season
$500K
in pandemic
revenue recovered
ZERO
cold calls or
cold emails made
Ball State Athletics, 2022–23 season
The Cold-2-Warm™ methodology applied in one of the hardest B2B sales markets imaginable — small city, low brand awareness, competing against major-market alternatives.
“I’ve spent years helping business owners build sales systems. And the whole time, I’ve been quietly searching for the same thing they need — a real inbound pipeline for my own business. Shane’s book was the clearest thinking I’d encountered on the problem. So I brought him in. He helped me build my list, wrote my direct mail campaigns, and created a multi-touch prospecting system from scratch — professional work, built around a legitimate strategy. If you’re a sales professional who’s been meaning to solve your own pipeline and just haven’t found the right system — that’s exactly where I was. Shane’s work is worth your time.”
— Matt Nettleton, President, Sandler DTB
What we build for you
Cold-2-Warm™ is a system, not a campaign. Every component is built specifically around your market, your buyers, and your positioning.
Strategy and positioning.
Target market definition by geography and buyer type. Offer development and positioning. Core messaging architecture. The strategic foundation everything else is built on.
Outreach assets.
A targeted prospect list built around your selected market. A multi-touch direct mail sequence (letters, postcards, sequenced over months). LinkedIn profile rewrites for your sellers. Evergreen LinkedIn content adaptable to other social channels. Lead magnet concept and copy. Landing page copy. Follow-up scripts for phone, voicemail, and email.
A system your team can run.
Every asset is built to be reusable. Your team learns the methodology, the cadence, and the follow-up process. New hires ramp faster because there’s a documented system. Top performers can be replicated, because their process is now your process.
“I was doing what everyone does — calling, emailing, hoping something stuck. Shane changed that. We built a real plan: the right targets, the right message, the right sequence. Prospecting isn’t about volume. It’s about precision. Shane taught me that.”
— Tom Doran, Account Executive, LocaliQ, USA Today Network
What we don't do
Cold-2-Warm™ is done with your sales team — not instead of them. We don’t make the follow-up calls. We don’t run your sellers’ outreach for them. We don’t replace the relationships your team is responsible for building.
What we do is design the system, write the assets, and teach your organization how to execute. Your sellers own the follow-up and the close. That’s where their time is best spent — and where the system fails if anyone else tries to do it for them.
What to expect
You’re ready to start. Here’s how the engagement runs.
1. Paperwork
Once you’re in, you’ll receive a consulting agreement, NDA, and invoice. We get those squared away in the first few days.
2. Onboarding session
A 60-minute working session to align on target geography, buyer type, offer positioning, and overall system strategy.
3. List development
We build your targeted prospect list — your “dream prospects” curated by your defined criteria. Delivered for your review and approval.
4. Asset creation
We write the direct mail sequence, lead magnet, landing page copy, LinkedIn rewrites, content, and follow-up scripts. Each asset is built specifically for your market and reviewed with you before final delivery.
5. Launch
First mail drop goes out. LinkedIn content goes live. Follow-up scripts are in your sellers’ hands. The system is running.
6. Run it
Your team executes the cadence. We’re available for retainer-based ongoing support — new letters, content refreshes, message tuning — or we hand off the SOP and your team takes it from there.
Logistical matters,
for your perusal
Duration
Setup and launch typically runs 4-6 weeks.
Scheduling
Engagements can typically begin within 1-2 weeks of signed paperwork.
What you provide
- A 60-minute onboarding session
- Access to existing positioning, messaging, or campaign materials for review
- Internal sponsor (usually a sales leader) who can approve assets and route feedback
- Sales team available for LinkedIn profile rewrites and follow-up training
Investment
Scope-dependent. Engagements range from focused single-market launches to multi-market campaigns with ongoing retainers. Schedule a consultation and we’ll scope the right structure for your organization.
Pass-through expenses
Our fee covers strategy, copy, and system design. Printing, postage, list acquisition, and platform costs are billed separately at cost.
The New Business Audit comes first.
Cold-2-Warm™ is built on a foundation. Before we write a single letter, we need to know who your Ideal Client Profile actually is, what your Unique Selling Point really is, and where your current Outreach Mix is breaking down. That’s what the New Business Audit produces.
If you commit to the New Business Audit and Cold-2-Warm™ together at the start, the audit is discounted by $1,500.
Schedule a Consultation