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6 Reasons Why You Should Cold Call in Oil & Gas

By Matthew Bertram·

From the ModalPoint Archive. This post dates from 2014, when ModalPoint operated as an oil & gas commercialization advisory founded by Mark LaCour — who remains a ModalPoint strategic advisor today. ModalPoint has since grown into decision intelligence for energy: go-to-market intelligence for selling into oil & gas, plus AI decision governance — see who we are now. The analysis below reflects the industry context of 2014.

Many oil & gas salespeople dread cold calling, but if you think about it differently you will quickly realize the benefits. It’s a trait of top sales people & entrepreneur’s, and it can be extremely rewarding. Click here for our previous post with the free scripts and contacts.

 

Transcript of Session –

Hey, folks. Let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry, shall we?

[Music]

All right. Today’s show we’re going to actually talk once again about cold calling in the oil and gas. Oh, my God you think I would have lit a firestorm somewhere with our past episode on cold calling.

The e-mails are going back and forth, the tweets, the post on LinkedIn, it’s crazy. And there seems to be two sides of the house, there’s the side that believes cold calling is a waste of time, there’s a side that believes it’s the best thing in the world for sales. Let’s help you clear it up and remember, we’re talking about just the oil and gas vertical, other markets we don’t really know anything about, but we know it works in oil and gas. So let’s talk about why you should be cold calling in oil and gas.

Okay. If you want to be in control of your destiny as a salesperson, cold calling is something that you need to master. If you don’t like cold calling, that’s because you’re looking at it negatively and it becomes a numbers game, right? It’s a churn, you have to – so many dials whatever. No, no, no, that’s all wrong. You need to look at cold calling as something positive because it empowers you as a salesperson. You may ask me, “Mark, how does it empower me as a salesperson?”

Number one, you have no limits, right? You control the number of prospects and opportunities and ultimately sales that you have by the number of cold calls you do. Number two, you can control the targets and the messaging, right? You figure out how to qualify your list; targets, companies, geographic locations and then you figure out what message works best for them, so you’re in control of all of that versus an existing sale where it starts somewhere else and you’re not quite sure what’s going on and it may not be a good fit. No, no, no, you control the entire thing, right?

It’s also a key to new opportunities. You control which of these prospects you can actually reach out and help solve a problem and they then become an opportunity in your pipeline, then you’re in charge, right? It is all you from the beginning to end, from cradle to grave, it’s you in charge. It is also a key trade of successful entrepreneurs. So you go out and find any successful  entrepreneur, part of their maturity path is that at some point they were doing cold calling and they’re doing it well. And then finally, another thing to think about in oil and gas, if you’re a good cold caller, you’re always in demand. You will never worry about having a job or making good money.

Now, I say all these, but you have to understand cold calling is not about you picking up the phone and pitching your product or your company to a prospect, that’s not how it’s done. People don’t have enough time to sit through that, it’s a waste of their time a waste of your time. What you have to do and we’ve said this a hundred times is you have to figure out who has a problem that you solve and then who recognizes the value. And that’s who you call up on and you have – you speak the language of your prospect and explain to them about the problem that you know they have and how you can help fix it and at a point, they’ll want to listen.

And then, just to help you a little bit, we’re going to throw a link up to our previous post on cold calling in oil and gas and in there is some cold call scripts to help you get started. And in the cold call scripts is actually a link for some oil and gas contacts that we gave away about 19,000 contacts.

So hopefully all this helps. We will see you next time.

[Music]

Where this stands in 2026

Outreach into oil & gas works differently now. Cold volume matters less than showing up with authority where buyers already look — peer proof, technical credibility, and a presence in the AI answers they trust. The goal is the same; the path changed.

How energy buyers decide today →

mark lacour

ModalPoint Editorial

ModalPoint Editorial is the byline for content published by the ModalPoint team — a Houston-based decision-intelligence advisory and division of EWR Digital. ModalPoint helps technology, equipment, and software companies sell into oil and gas, pairing go-to-market intelligence grounded in how the energy industry decides with AI decision governance (DIG) for a defensible record.

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