What success have you had regarding cold calling vs conferences?

Being successful at conferences is quite an art. And its generally pretty expensive to exhibit, so I would be quite methodical about it. I sponsor/exhibit at a few conferences a year. They range from 1K- 4K each not counting transport/accom etc. Its only just worth it, directly. Its hard to measure the indirect benefits, but they are real.

I think its a good idea to attend conferences without exhibiting, and then exhibit the following year if it looks worth it. I talk to the exhibitors as much as I can about the conferences they go to, which ones are worth it, how they set up their booth etc.

Its also worthwhile to find out who else is attending, and do your cold emails to them in advance, saying you would love to have a chat at the conference "since you are both going." That goes for sales targets as well as people in a similar space to you. I have found a major benefit of conferences is getting to know my competitors and peers.

I think you'll get better and more specific suggestions if you can talk about about what you're hoping to sell/achieve. Or at least the category, rough price point, and stage of development.

I've built a bunch of sales-driven businesses (not huge though, only up to like $1M/y) without ever doing either a conference or a cold call.

For cheaper sales (<$10k), I usually just did normal content marketing stuff, but instead of asking people to "buy it now" (or whatever), you ask them to contact you for more info, and then it turns into a normal sales conversation (called "inbound sales", if you're looking for more info).

For larger sales ($10k-150k), it occasionally came via the inbound channels above, but also used a lot of word of mouth from either my business advisors (part of their role was to make key intros) or referrals from other happy customers.

My rule of thumb is that the colder the sales channel (conferences and cold calls are both very cold), then the more mature your product and sales process need to be. So they're fine to use later, once you've got it all figured out, but it's not usually fruitful to start that way. This is because sales depends on some subtle language/understanding, and those channels make it difficult for you to spend the time to properly understand the people you're talking to.

That being said, it's tough to leave the city you're already hooked into. When I made the switch from London to Barcelona, my sales basically dried up, since I would do a lot of my early sales conversations over a pint in a pub, chatting about vague stuff (goals and problems) which wasn't really worth either of us getting on a plane for. To get around this, you can either a) hustle hard to build a new network in the new city or b) adjust the business model so it uses a less real-world acquisition channel.

Cold email used to work for me years ago but it’s much less effective now. Conferences can be good if you’re prepared to invest that kind of time, effort and money. We have got some great customers via conferences but you have to be attending relevant ones.

The big mistake startups seem to make is blowing $$$ exhibiting at cool startup conferences rather than attending conferences relevant to their industry.