Echoing what I have learned myself. If you are an entrepreneur and you haven't read "Nail It then Scale It", do so now. No, really. There are few books I solidly recommend, particularly for business, but this book is the one I have found most valuable time and time again. When you finish reading it, go back to these slides and see how many were addressed. Absolutely zero affiliation with the book or authors, just a big fan.

http://www.amazon.com/Nail-then-Scale-Entrepreneurs-Breakthr...

I highly recommend the book Nail it Then scale it.

http://www.amazon.com/Nail-then-Scale-Entrepreneurs-ebook/dp...

There's some interesting discussion in there about cold emails and cold calls. It proposes that you should be emailing/calling prospects about a problem you think they have. (Do some research first instead of just saying, "I know nothing, tell me about your day").

The rule of thumb this book recommends is 50%. If you don't get a 50% response rate from emails or calls, you either picked the wrong or too wide of a demographic, or the problem you think potential customers have isn't the biggest type of problem. Iterate the demographic, or iterate the problem statement.

I've been using a variant of the 50% rule in an online survey/Google ad, and it's led to some very effective output. It's helped me pick headlines and solution ideas, that get a bunch of interest from people. I created a product the other day (just a landing page pitching people pay me X to do a specific type of project for them) and I had sales that same day.