Cold calling may now be outdated. People have become defensive to cold calls and not many respond to them anymore. Cold calling is now about rejection, getting rejected call after call until many salespeople, especially B2B salespeople, just get fed up and quit. There are other methods of generating business leads without cold calling, and many of them inexpensive and not too time consuming.

Here is my list of getting more sales leads and selling more without cold calling:

1. Create a website and advertise it. In this day and age, there is no reason why a business professional or entrepreneur should not have a website. Not having a budget for it is no excuse as you can, now, create your own website for under $100. For example, you can buy a domain name and website building software on godaddy.com for under $100, and that comes with easy to use website templates that anybody can use to build their own website. And, advertising is now cheap and easy as well. You can buy first page listings on google.com through Goggle AdWords. For example, if you were a commercial insurance broker in Portland you can buy a listing on Google for just 5 cents a click for the search phrase “Portland business insurance.” This means it would cost just 5 cents for each visitor Google brings to your website.

2. A new online sales lead generation website is trade-pals.com. Here, it is free to create a professional business profile in any business category and across all major North American cities. You just create a profile that says what you do, what type of business you want, who should contact you, and why people should contact you. If someone sees your profile and wants to do business with you, you will get an email stating exactly what they’re looking for and, from this, you decide whether you’ll purchase the person’s full contact info (name, address, phone, email, and URL) which is the sales lead. Each email you receive will be from someone that has seen your profile and already wants to do business with you so the sales leads are top quality.

3. You have business cards… use them; use them in creative ways. Every time I send mail, no matter to whom it’s to, I include a business card. Every time I eat at a restaurant, I leave behind a business card. Every time I meet someone new, I offer a business card. You never know if the next person that sees your card will require your services. Make sure your business card clearly states what you do.

4. Network at business functions and trade shows. Again, bring business cards.

5. Create a free classifieds ad on craigslist.org. Craigslist is the biggest classifieds ad site on the internet and every day thousands, if not millions of people visit the site. Classifieds ads on the site stay posted for 45 days, so you only need to create an ad every 45 days. The best part is, these ads find there way into Google’s search results so make sure your ad has keywords that your clients may be searching.

Tino Buntic is an insurance salesperson and is also the creator of trade-pals.com, designed to provide sales leads without cold calling to business professionals across North America.