Well he's in a meeting all morning, I could take a message and if he's interested he'll get back to you. Compare the previous scenario with the following one. Because you have the name of the decision-maker, you have his address and fax number, you send a letter or fax introducing yourself. He certainly is. OK, I'll put you through.
Warm calls have a higher closing ratio that cold calls.
Your chances of success are greatly increased when you are armed with the name of the decision-maker. If you don't have this information, you could spend days playing telephone tag with someone who ultimately isn't in a position to authorize a purchase order. If you truly want the sale, you must identify the decision-maker early on in the sales process or you could end up wasting valuable time and blowing away potentially good prospects.