I aggressively sell SEO over the phone in a cold-call environment. My company is significantly better in our niche target market than any other competitor even near our price range (any competitor better then us is anywhere from 5x to 15x higher in cost on average). Clearly we compete on cost and quite frankly the people that want this assume its expensive and don't actively look for a solution. Cold-Calling is an excellent way to reach those "passively looking" customers who are interested but have prohibited themselves by not looking. I don't see any less value here, we offer much more value for the much less cost then our competitors. We boast a high 90s (>95%) customer retention rate on a mounth to month basis with no contracts. That's unreal... clearly we're doing something right.
You're making a classic marketing guy mistake which is not understanding the point of sale. Sales guys often don't understand the conversation that leads to the sale so you're field of expertice is not alone. The key is realizing that BOTH outlooks are important in building a successful customer acquisition model. Cold-calling is simply a brute-force, low-level understanding way of marketing (getting the customer interested). It's not as an effective contact to lead ratio as real marketing... but it's damn effective.
