Guerilla Selling

I want to open the floor with a current issue I'm faced with. I am firmly believe that cold calling is a necessary part of selling. However, I know (based on what I've read and from my peers) that it may be the single LEAST effective means of creating valid business opportunities. Here's the 411 on my situation:

I've been selling for about 10 years, and I have been fortunate enough to work for organization that did a great job creating qualified leads, so I have rarely had to make more that 20-30 calls per day to maintain my funnel. I've always tried to focus on a solid value statement, and I've been told my phone technique is pretty good. Then I qualify my leads to ensure I focus on high probability opportunities. This leads to a fairly good closing ratio. The most creative thing I've had to do to generate business is utilize a poorly crafted "Selling to VITO" letter to a number of potential clients, which oddly enough, worked out not to badly (sent out 40 letters, closed 3 deals).

I've just started at a new company (Telecommunications and IT services) and I literally got handed a raw list of 400 companies no target industry, no defined size based on revenue or employee count (about 270 of them are less than 5 employees which isn't exactly our sweet spot). The systems (CRM) aren't exactly in order and there are no defined territories, so it's tough to apply any science to information I've been given. So I've had to dig into the recesses of my brain and pull all the information I've read about building a base, quite literally from scratch. I've created a target list of 60 accounts for myself and I have been in Telecom for about 5 years so I have some contacts that can help me get ramped up. I'm also working with one of the other new reps on the cold calling front, so we can keep each other motivated on the off days. What I really need are suggestions to augment my cold calling efforts. What have you found that works?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Effective - by that I mean getting a reasonable percentage of leads from your prospecting efforts. Are you using an intro letter and following up with a phone call? Or maybe you're simply hitting the street collecting business cards of appropriate contacts? Are you blanketing an area with information on your company creating brand awareness in preparation for a cold call? I'm getting a low percentage of hits from cold calling, and I want to add other activities to the mix.

I've done a bit a of reading, but I want to know what is actually working for my peers. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Did you say you send out a letter of introduction prior to the telephone call? Do you include a referral source in the letter?

You could buy a targeted list from a list broker. Depending on your script and time available for cold calling this might yield the results you're looking for.