How do I stop dreading cold calls when I start business development for my engineering firm?

You stop it by running ten real conversations and letting the results replace the imagined ones. Most of my anxiety about cold conversations came from scenarios I had invented in my head, and the only thing that checked them was making the calls.

What happened when my coach gave me ten cold conversations?

My coach assigned me ten cold conversations with rural water and sewer providers. I dreaded them. Then I made them, and they went well. One group learned about HDPE piping during the conversation.

That is the whole story, and I want to keep it that small. It is not a story about a big win. It is a story about how far apart the dread and the reality were.

Why is the dread so loud before the call?

I think the dread is rarely about the call itself. It is about a version of the call you have already played out in your head. In that version the other person is annoyed and you come across badly.

None of that is data. It is a story that has not happened yet, and it is easy to react to it as if it were a record of something real.

I suspect engineers can be good at this, because we are used to thinking through how things fail. That is my opinion, not a rule. On a design it is a useful habit. Pointed at a call to a stranger, it can produce a long list of failures with no evidence behind any of them.

Why does this matter for owning a firm?

If you want to own a practice, someone has to start conversations with people who do not know you yet. A firm with no new conversations is a firm waiting for the phone to ring.

That is where Grandfather Engineering and modern delivery part ways. In the old model, the founder stays the bottleneck: he does the work, bills the hours, and hopes the next job arrives by referral. Starting conversations is left to chance because it feels uncomfortable.

The modern approach treats business development like any other engineering problem. You decide on a test, run it on purpose, and read the results. The firm stops depending on luck and on the founder’s mood.

I think the quiet cost of skipping the call is that you never find out whether you were wrong. If you avoid it because you expect it to go badly, you never get the evidence either way.

How do I treat a fear like an engineering problem?

In the book I ask readers to bring the same habits to their business that they bring to their technical work. When a design is not working, you do not keep using it. You analyze what is wrong, modify your approach, try the solution, and refine until you get the result you need.

Apply that to dread and it gets practical:

• Write the scenario down. Put the feared outcome on paper in plain words. A written prediction can be checked.
• Separate what you have seen from what you have imagined. Be honest about which pile is bigger.
• Pick a small, fixed test. Ten conversations is a number you can finish. The book’s advice is to start small, with one client or one project.
• Change one variable at a time. If you change your list, your message and your approach all at once, you will not know what moved the result.
• Track what happens. Write down what was said and what you would change. Give changes enough time to show results.

None of this removes the nerves. It gives them a job: they are a prediction waiting to be checked.

What if some calls go badly?

Some might. I am not telling you every conversation will go well. My ten went well, but that is my result, not a promise about yours.

Even so, I would take a real bad call over an imagined one. A real one gives you something specific to adjust. An imagined one tells you only that you are afraid, and you cannot adjust a message based on a story you invented.

So the test is not whether every call succeeds. It is whether you came away with real information in place of a guess. The book also asks you to be willing to admit when something is not working and try a different approach.

What should I do next week?

Here is what I would do in your position.

1. Pick one kind of client you want to talk to and have not approached.
2. Write down the worst version of the first call, the one your head keeps replaying. Mark which parts you have actually seen happen.
3. Set a number you can finish, such as ten conversations, and a date.
4. Make the first call before you have polished everything.
5. After each call, jot down what you expected and what actually happened. That is my suggestion, not a formula.

After a few calls, read your own notes. Compare what you predicted with what you got, and let the second one set your next move.