Lexicon ·
cold approach
noun phrase
- Stated meaning
- Starting a conversation with a stranger you have no introduction to.
- Operating meaning
- A sale opened with no lead, referral or prior contact, in which the opener carries the whole cost of the first sentence.
- Origin
- Pickup vocabulary, in use on the seduction newsgroup alt.seduction.fast by September 2003 and a chapter heading there that November. The name matches the sales term cold call.
On the seduction newsgroup alt.seduction.fast (opens in a new window) the phrase was in use by September 2003. By November it was a chapter heading in a course outline posted there, between “Simple approaches” and “Eliciting values explained.” The Natural (opens in a new window) defined it in 2012 as the approach made “when you initiate a conversation with a girl,” set it against opening warm, and itemized the method: “There are two ways to make a cold approach.”
The name is borrowed from sales, where a cold call is made to a prospect with no introduction. The pickup shelf kept the structure intact: the stranger is a lead, the opener is a script, and the result is filed afterward as a report. The Mystery Method (opens in a new window) conceded the one cost its training does not remove: “The fear of a cold approach never goes away.”
Under load, the cold approach is a sale opened with no lead and no referral, and the opener carries the whole cost of the first sentence. The stranger did not ask to be a prospect and carries the cost of the second sentence, the reply, which has to decline or continue a transaction she did not open. The apps replaced it with the match, in which both parties opt in before a word is sent. The cold approach is the one opening left in the market that the other party has not agreed to receive.