the cold call

1976

“Play it straight and roll with the punches.” Kevin Grady

One of the most difficult things in any business is getting clients, and the most formidable two-headed dragon guarding the treasure of success is the cold call. One in a hundred can do it well. One in a thousand enjoys doing it. One in a million loves it. The cold call is the civil equivalent of diving down a lightless dirt tunnel in Vietnam with a knife in your teeth, a flashlight in one hand, and a .45 in the other. It’s not quite that of course, but it feels like it if you do it for a living, like it or not.

One afternoon, in a quiet market while happily employed at the Standard Bank located on Park Avenue in NYC—a tony branch of the esteemed Standard Bank of South Africa in Johannesburg and often called the JPM of Sub-Saharan Banking—I was bored and decided to do some cold calls. I have always been an artfully gifted ice-breaker in any setting. Calling girls for dates and hustling business has always been second nature to me.

I hit on a few hedge funds and corporates and stealthily worked my way past the guardians of decision-makers for an hour. I met a portfolio manager working at CALPERS, who is to this day one of my best friends. I met a head trader for Waddell and Reed in Kansas City that afternoon. I never got his business because we couldn’t find a fit but I made friends with him and we had dinner together a few times when I was working In Chicago. All because of a few calls on a dull afternoon. Fwiw, Wadell and Reed is, according to legend the firm that sold 14,000 S&Ps on the opening of October 19, 1987, the ostensible tipping point of the crash. I did ask him.

I would say at least half of the business I’ve gotten in my career has been from cold calling. However, no cold call was ever more productive than one I made to Jack Hetenna at the Republic National Bank in October of 1976.