Meeting people on the phone is totally doable, especially if you have an introduction to them or have pre-demonstrated credibility somehow. It doesn't 100% play to my strengths, so I did a lot of flying around back when I was doing active consulting. My engagements were worth ~$50k apiece so taking a $10k trip to a conference (or just a target-rich area like, say, SF) was totally doable if it got me four later stage conversations with a 25% chance of closing apiece.

Typically it would look something like "4 week prospecting trip, fill up 2~3 quarters worth of consulting engagements, fill up last quarter while delivering." This was a hard schedule to sustain after getting married, which is one reason I'm not actively consulting anymore.

But there are many, many ways to do this. A more successful consultant in Ogaki does 90% of his prospecting over Skype.