I think business networking is likely to get better results than cold-calling.

Cold calls "marked as spam"? That's funny!
However, I think the future belongs to social networking and online environment as a whole.

I agree with Zethix. I never entertain cold calls.

The wonder of the internet for marketing purposes is that it puts the onus on the customer to find the business and not the other way round.

I hate receiving leaflets through the post, email spam and sales calls. For this reason Surrey PC Support does not do any outbound marketing activity. Instead it concentrates on marketing through search engines and word of mouth referrals.

I'm not saying this is the best approach, but it is the most honourable and honour and integrity is Surrey PC Support's key value.

If only more people didn't entertain cold calls. Then it would be the best approach also.

The main problem what people do not think about on the E Commerce shop is that unless you are the only person in the whole world who is selling that product the chances of selling is 1 in a million unless you cold call or leaflet drop.
When your shop is in the high street of eg Exeter, you are going to only be competing with maybe 1 or 2 other shops selling that product yes? but on the net you will be one of around 2 billion shops all trying to get a sale, that is the main reason people keep telling me that the shop they have run for a year is waiting for it's first sale.
It took us years to get going with an E Commerce shop, but a shop in the town was away from within 2 weeks of being open, never looked back.
At the end of the day if you do not need lots of sales, yes you can just let the public search the 2 billion on-line shops for you, but your over heads need to be small each month, or you go bust rather fast.

...or the other simple solution is not to sell the same old stuff that everyone else is selling, but to sell something different. I certainly don't think cold calling is a viable solution for an ecommerce site wanting to get sales.

I concentrate on locality niches. That way I am not competing with millions of IT Support providers, just the handful in the East Surrey area.

If your audience is old people or the stupid, then cold calling is great. They are always willing to chat and believe everything you tell them. I hate cold callers.