50+ cold calling statistics

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50+ cold calling statistics

Cold calling statistics is very much alive, so don’t let anyone convince you that it has one foot in the grave. Cold calling statistics is an effective way to get more prospects and gain new clients.

You learn what’s working with your competitor. The more cold statistics become more effective.

Here are 50+ Cold Calling Statistics

Customers are curious, so they want to know more about your offer and are willing to take your call. It’s the best way for buyers to decide what’s right for them.

Experts are talking to buyers and salespeople to dig more about this topic, especially when they saw the state of cold prospecting and cold calling.

Here’s the good news for salespeople:

Almost 57 percent of the C-level customers choose what salespeople call them. The data is based on a comprehensive Rain Group research.
About half of all managers and directors prefer that salespeople call them also.
In the past 12 months, 69 percent of customers accepted calls from new salespeople.
According to Rain Group, they found out that almost 82 percent of customers accept meet-ups when the salespeople reach out to them first.
The earliest portion of the purchasing method is a good time for salespeople. Almost 71 percent of customers prefer to hear from salespeople if they want to learn more about a strong business result.
Almost 75 percent of buyers in different industries tend to join or attend a scheduled meeting or event based on call or email, according to a study found by DiscoverOrg study.
The expected number of calls to get a sale is six calls, according to the study done by Velocify. Lesser than that might not get the interest of salespeople. And more than that will cover more effort and time which can diminish return of sales.
There is 50 percent of leads that never attain a second call from business people based on the research done by Velocify.

Facts about cold phone calls

It may seem not easy these days to attract customers through phone calls, besides not all of them have screen calls. However, creating a more personal connection is the crucial factor why cold phone calls matter.

Here are the facts that you must know about cold phone calls:

The perfect day to make a call for prospected buyers are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This is based on the comprehensive research conducted by CallHippo.
The absolute best day is Wednesday, where 46 percent more are converted into sales compared to Mondays based on CallHippo research.
The best response call time is within an hour a buyer is making inquiries. Whether they are downloading something from your site or sending an email with their setoff questions, it’s practical to call them within 60 minutes after an inquiry.
The best time to call buyers is between 4 to 5 PM and between 11 AM to 12 PM.
Phone calls make a difference, and they stand out more in the marketing industry, knowing that most businessperson receives emails daily and there’s a possibility that they won’t get one of yours.
According to research from RingLead, almost 80 percent of calls go to voicemail. So make sure to leave a message 20 seconds long.
The reason is that buyers will not listen that much to a 30 second and more cold call message. According to the study of Inside Sales, each additional second beyond 30 will decrease your chance of connecting with prospected buyers by 2 percent.

The low-down on cold email

Email is the easiest thing to do, and it only takes a second to send one, but cold call email results can be challenging to find out.

Below are the critical things to consider about cold emails.

According to the Rain Group research, 80 percent of prospected buyers chose that salespeople contact them through email. Remember that the content of the email has to be personalized, not a marketed message.
In the past 12 months, almost 77 percent of customers have responded positively to an email sent by a salesperson.
A study conducted by Direct Marketing Association shows that almost 59 percent of customers believe that sales emails are irrelevant to what they are expecting.
More than 50 percent of buyers tend to look for another provider if they don’t get any personalized emails based on the research conducted by Salesforce Survey.
The most effective time to send personalized emails is mid-afternoons and late mornings. It’s when most buyers open their email messages based on the study conducted by Get Response.
The best time of the day to send an email to prospected buyers is weekdays, according to Yesware.

Cold Calling Benefits

Compared to indirect marketing like social media ads, TV spots, and mailings, cold calling produces a rare chance for two-way, real-time communication.

It provides agents the opportunity to assess the quality of leads, build personal relationships with different people their company does business with, and know their prospected market better.

Below are the additional benefits of cold calling.

The cost-effective marketing process for small businesses and startups.
Efficient sales training option for existing and new salespeople.
Provide a chance to research competitors, which determines the number of prospects who identify top competition, learn where competitors are failing, and using competitor’s tools.
Gives main details about the prospected market’s needs, pain points, products and services expectations, and more.
Highly customized communication.
Way to connect with new markets and gets more clients that could be a good lead.
The choice to hire part-time, short-term, and full-time in-house or remote employees.
Cold calls can be performed anywhere, on a different device, offering employees flexibility and saving on the hardware costs.

What Prospects Want From Cold Calls

Knowing how many customers want cold calls, you have to understand also what they want or need to hear from these calls.

According to research:

66 percent of customers say that cold calling will highlight the real solutions to the existing business issues, which initiate them to schedule follow-ups to the contact outreach.
96 percent of customers say that they get more interested with cold calls that show the actual value of services or products being offered to them.
54 percent of customers wanted complete details on services and product features on the first cold calls but shows only 25 percent of salespeople give them the information they want to hear during the first call.
Over three-fourths of salespeople say connecting to customers at the proper time significantly influences the conversion rates.

How to Make Good Cold Calls?

There is no possible way to make good cold calls. But, any salesperson can use many proven strategies to help them connect with buyers better. The data below will show you an example.

In cold calling, salespeople only have 5 to 15 minutes to convince their prospected buyers.
The average duration of successful cold calls that can move to the next stage is 7.5 minutes.
The tone of your voice during your conversation impacts the 93 percent potential success of a cold call.
Asking buyers about their business objectives and pain points can help close a deal.
Some words can harm the success rate of your cold calls. These words include ‘discount’ (17%), ‘show you how’ (13%), ‘free trial’ (5%), and ‘contract’ (7%). Additionally, saying the organization’s brand more than five times in a call can harm the connection rate by 14 percent.
According to Hacker, mentioning the phrase ‘we provide’ more than five times in a call can lessen the close rate by 25 percent.
Successful salespeople use ‘certainly,’ ‘absolutely,’ and ‘definitely’ 4 times more than lower performers.
The top salesperson is ten times likely to utilize collaborative words instead of ‘I,’ ‘you,’ and ‘me.’
There is a success rate of 10 percent for salespeople opening their cold call with ‘How have you been?’
It can improve your success rate by two times if you state why you are doing cold outreach.

When to Perform Cold Calls

It would be best if you had the right timing for everything. So, make sure to come up with a plan first before making cold calls to your prospects at best possible time. Below is the list of some statistics that can help salespeople to schedule good cold calls to buyers. This way, you can ensure a better chance at conversion and engage your leads more efficiently.

Calling buyers at a suggested time can maximize the average gain in conversion by 50 percent.
The data from cold calling will show an increase in the likelihood of converting a buyer by almost 401 percent if you get connected with them in less than a minute. It will serve as a good lead.
The research on cold calling tells that the best time to respond to prospect inquiries is within an hour. If longer than that, the chance of connecting to your lead will decrease by 7 times.
Based on the conversion rate and statistics of cold calls, waiting at least 30 minutes of your time to make the first call can reduce the chances of conversion to 60 percent. On the other hand, waiting for 24 hours can lessen your bet to 17 percent.
The best and most effective time to make cold calls is between 4 to 5 PM. On the other hand, the worst possible time to make a call is between 7 to 11 AM since this is the time when people are busy at work.
You are 45 percent most likely to connect a lead if you call them during middle days like Tuesday and Wednesday.
An ideal time to make cold calls is from Wednesday and Thursday from 4 to 6 PM. On the other hand, the worst time to make cold calls is Mondays between 6 AM and noontime.

The Importance of Following Up

Nearly half of salespeople never get bothered to make follow-ups or a single attempt to connect again with a customer after the first call.

Doing follow-ups is not a waste of your time and resources. Failure to do so, especially with potential prospects, will most likely result in a possible revenue loss as well.

It will only take 8 cold calls attempts to reach a customer.
The average sales agent will make 2 cold call attempts to converse with a customer before giving up.
Almost half of the salespeople will only do one follow-up before giving up.
Over three-fourths of a successful sale needs 5 follow-ups of cold calls before the conversion of leads takes effect.
Almost 40 percent of customers say they are more likely to convert if B2B or B2C salespeople call them again at a given time.

Best Practices for Successful Cold Call Sales

Salespeople must also keep up with what their customers want. They should understand the importance of knowing which days, what time to call, and how many follow-ups they need to make.

Prospects are not always on their phones. They are also on their social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and Instagram most of the time. Social media platforms are the best way also to reach new targets and leads based on their needs and wants. Customers deserve and expect more than a scripted sales pitch. They want a more personalized one that is based on facts and research too. So that is one thing that you must provide them to gain their trust as well.

The best salespeople learn how to study and conceptualize their thoughts to make cold calling less objectionable. They must know well how to connect and reach out with their customers and the best time to call them.

The B2B salespeople make 40 calls a day on average.
75 percent of salespeople say that they do research first about their prospects before making a cold call.
80 percent of sales must need at least four to five follow-ups after meeting with the prospect.
Salespeople leave 70 voicemails a day on average.
The success rate for cold calls is 45 percent higher during Wednesdays compared to Mondays.
About 16 percent of cold calls are answered between 10 AM and 11 AM. These are the best hours to make a sales call.
The first 60 minutes after one lead shows a good interest in your brand, making this the best time to do sales calls. The statistic about this is handy, especially if you are tracking web logins.
Almost 78 percent of salespeople use social media platforms to research their prospects as part of the selling process and strategies.
Almost 80 percent of customers used LinkedIn to check a company’s background before taking any calls from sales representatives.
Almost 79 percent of salespeople use social media to get prospects that produce higher sales than the average of sales reps who do not utilize social media.

Why referrals make a difference on cold calling

There is no easy thing about cold calling. However, the use of referrals could kick-start your cold calling efforts and lessen the burden.

According to an IDC study, almost 75 percent of brand executives choose to work with sales representatives referred to them by trusted people.
According to a Nielsen study, almost 84 percent of customers are influenced by suggestions and advice from family and friends. It means to say that creating referrals is one of the practical tools a salesperson needs to do for cold calling.
According to the Wharton School of Business study, buyers won through referrals are 24 percent more profitable than other processes.

Statistics on Cold Calling Challenges

For some sales professionals, cold calling might be one of the most frustrating jobs. For beginners, most customers might reject cold callers’ offerings during the initial call. In some situations, they will only hang up before a salesperson could even begin with their pitch.

But, it’s not all the time that the cold calling process is the real problem. Only a tiny part of cold calling succeeds in connecting with prospects. Additionally, several salespeople tend to waste a great time of their working hours just leaving voicemails because they could not reach out to their customers.

As explained in some of the researched data above, many salespeople don’t have any ideas on how to use cold calling strategies in an effective manager. Some common mistakes they make include storing incomplete and inaccurate customer details, making ill-timed calls, and having ineffective cold call scripts.

If you want to increase the cold calling process for your business growth, you need to be more proactive in knowing your prospects to learn how to connect with them and when to get in touch.

Only 20 percent of high-quality leads are produced through outbound processes like cold calling.
Two hundred calls are needed to get one appointment alone.
45 percent of the respondents say that they don’t ask for referrals most of the time from clients.
Salespeople spend almost 15 percent of their hours leaving only voicemails.
In a day, salespeople leave an average of 75 voicemails.
A team of salespeople spends 1200 hours every month leaving voicemails alone.
30 to 40 percent is the average rate of cancellation and no-show on scheduled meetings.

The logic behind lead nurturing

What is lead nurturing? If done right, it can lead to success. It’s essential to make sure prospects are qualified candidates and know more about them before making cold calls.

According to Dreamforce by Conversica survey, salespeople don’t do follow-ups on almost half of their leads.
Why? 37 percent of salespeople say that their marketing provides inferior quality leads, and 41 percent claim they achieve leads that are hard to reach.
On the contrary, 31 percent of marketers say salespeople can’t succeed with their leads because they don’t try hard enough to connect with customers or reach out too soon.
Early connection with the right customer counts. Remember that almost 60 percent of buyers tried to get the correct information from the salespeople who attain success in the lead-nurturing process of the sales cycle. This is based on the research conducted by SiriusDecsions.

The biggest obstacles for cold calling

Cold calling is still considered one of the most challenging parts of introducing and selling brands. Below is the list of the problematic issues experts have found sales reps are up against when making cold calls.

Change happens. You might be wondering why there is 20 percent of contact details are outdated in your data. According to ZoomInfo, 30 percent of people today tend to change their work or jobs, 43 percent change their phone numbers used at work, 66 percent of people change their job function or title, and 35 percent of people change their email address. It happens all in a single year.
The list is not solid. According to the study conducted by Baylor University Keller Research Center, the odds of connecting to someone through a cold call is slim: 17 percent of contact details are incorrect, 28 percent will respond and answer the call, and 55 percent will not answer at all.
It’s a complicated process. According to Salesforce research, if there are eight people involved in a purchasing decision, it takes at least six of them to approve for a sale to take effect, which makes it hard for salespeople to get a hold of the right individual.
You cannot learn everything. Based on a HubSpot survey, there is only 36 percent of customers to expect, and a salesperson who tried cold calling them had provided information related to their wants and needs. But, 75 percent of salespeople believe that they were right with what they pitched.
Time is not well spent. Of course, salespeople have one goal, to make a sale most of the time. But, based on Pace Productivity research, it has been found out that they spend 22 percent of their time on selling and 35 percent on the administrative paperwork. Ideally, a salesperson should be selling 33 percent of the time and shuffling paper 17 percent of the time.
So few to make or find referrals. Based on Heinz Marketing report, it has found out that only 20 percent of salespeople are using a formal referral system. Even though buyers are willing to accept them, there are still more leads for cold calls that are lost.

What Do These Cold Calling Statistics Mean for Your Business?

Statistics always prove its point, it doesn’t lie. Based on the statistics shown above, cold calling is very much present. But, several sales representatives are a challenge to make the most of it and be successful. Some fail to reach their prospected targets and choose not to use this traditional method on sales.

You are missing out on the chance to connect with your buyers if you stop using the cold calling process. For beginners, the Omnichannel strategies, which are very popular these days, show how crucial it is to leverage your phone calls. Phone calls are one of the usual but most important processes of communication channels available for everyone. You can deliver a more personalized approach to buyer connection and interactions through cold calls, letting you develop long-lasting and stronger relationships with them.

One thing to remember is you can only claim the benefits of the cold calling process if you do the right thing. It means to say that you have to take it seriously and go out of your way to pinpoint the best opportunity time to connect with them, learn about them more, and understand how you can converse with them as effectively as possible. Some salespeople try to talk with a sales software provider who can provide them a good system to plan good calling methods. It’s a better strategy also to close a deal.

FAQ about Cold Calling

What is the success rate of cold calling?

According to sales statistics done for cold calling purposes, cold calls have a 1 to 2 percent success rate. It leads to the conclusion of some people that cold calls are already dead, but the fact is, it’s one of the few processes that take effect in the overall marketing performance.

What is the best time to make cold calls?

The best time to make cold calls to prospects is between 10 to 11 AM. There is a 15 percent chance that the customers will answer. Another time to call people at a 14 percent chance of answering your cold calls is 2 PM.

How many no’s you will receive before a yes?

Salespeople need to do four to five phone calls to make a successful cold call conversion rate. They also need 18 to 20 attempts of calls before agents reach someone willing to connect with them.

What are the most effective days to cold call?

The most effective day to do a cold call is Wednesday. On this day, you have 46 percent most likely of conversing with buyers than on other days. The reason behind that is that Monday is a busy day for everyone. During this day, businesses organize tasks and make schedules for the week. CEOs, managers, and executives with purchasing authority do not have the time to connect with salespeople. On the other hand, people slow down on Friday and their thoughts are already on the weekend’s plan. So the best days for cold calls it during the middle of the week, like Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Does cold calling work?

Yes, if you see the cold calling statistics, it will tell you that it works. Customers find cold calls a helpful way to make their research process for a certain project successful. Cold calling is one of the proven methods to maximize the selling brand’s prospect base.

The Bottomline

Undoubtedly, cold calling is one of the most helpful processes in marketing today. But, it takes a lot of things to make it a success. You can only achieve mastery in sales if you understand each person’s sales skill respectively. The main factor to a productive and efficient cold calling is to utilize a customer management plan with the right visual presentation dashboard.

Despite alternative technologies today in communication like emails, customers are still looking for a person-to-person connection in which they can talk to a real person. It’s true, especially for larger purchases and service issues. If done properly, cold calling can be useful and effective for every salesperson, trained or not.