Of course B2B cold calling works ... ice cold, warm, semi cold.. there's a range of different approaches that can be taken depending on what your product or service is and who your audiences are.
However, getting a good balance of return on investment and finding the best balance of money versus results can be the tricky part of the project.
There's various pricing structures ... retainers, fixed rates, pay per lead, pay per appointment, low fixed rates plus bonus, guaranteed retainers (off the top of my head)
Some work well on their own, others work better with a combination of email and phone.
But it really isn't for every industry and product as some are just too costly versus the results and the profit margin within certain products or services just doesn't bear the cost to acquire each lead.
Sometimes therefore it may be just one part of your product/service offering that is worth promoting via telemarketing (rather than lower margin products).
It always seems a bit odd to compare telemarketing with SEO but what I will say is that sometimes telemarketing can bring in instant profit that can then be reinvested into ongoing SEO work.
Oh and if I had a pound for every SEO company that wants telemarketing to introduce and sell their services I would be very rich
