Organize your outreach qualifying calls into three basic categories:
A: Reachable prospects during day
B: Reachable prospects after hours
C. Reachable only via gate-keeper

To make your prospecting easier and way less stressful here are five tips I think you will find useful.
Give these tips a shot...not all at once, but one here, one there. Be patient... stick with my strategy. You'll see positive results...especially with your cold call phone prospecting.
- Never "Wing It". Always use a script. It keeps repetitions, omissions and improper sequencing out of your pitch. They spell trouble when it comes to phone prospecting.
- Keep It Short. Make your introduction brief and to the point. How brief? Twenty to thirty seconds! That's all you get. So be accurate, concise,and persuasive. Are you starting to see why you need a script?
- Relax. Dialog and delivery in movies, TV, and plays flows from carefully crafted scripts. Yet these staged conversations sound completely natural and spontaneous. Effective prospecting is no different. Subtle inflections and pauses make your presentation more natural and far more believable.
- Prospect Qualify. Good prospects...weak prospects? Find out who's who by asking specific questions. For example, "Does this interest you?" Or "When would you like me to recontact you"? Make prospect qualify questions part of every script!
- Test,Test,Test ----but control your variables carefully. Be especially careful with key words or phrases. You might think they don't matter, but they do! So once you find a winning script, stick with every word of it!
Small Controlled Test
You Pick Markets and List
200 Prospects Per Test
You Monitor Account Activity
Test Month-To-Month
Cancel Any Time
Recommended reading:
100 Best Business Development Books of All Time
Seven Must read classic business books
Forbes: New Rules for Prospecting In The Age of The Customer
Also: Harvard Business Review reports on benefits of cold call lead development.
From Harvard Business School On-line: This On-line learning course sounds interesting