Playbook · Cold calling
Cold Calling Tips That Hold Up Against 300 Million Calls
By Marián Cabadaj · Published 22 October 2026 · 9 min read
The calls that book meetings are decided before the phone rings: by who you dial, why you are dialling them, and what you say in the first ten seconds.
Gong and 30 Minutes to President's Club looked at more than 300 million cold calls for their 2024 guide. The average rep needed 402 cold calls to book one meeting. The top rep needed 45. The gap comes from a list where every name has a reason to pick up, an opener that earns the next sentence, and a plan for the two objections that arrive on almost every call.
Below are the tips and techniques that hold up against that data, each with its source, plus the US rules a B2B caller has to respect. If you want the actual words to say, they are in our cold calling script guide.
Why do most cold calls fail before anyone answers?
Because most dials never reach a person. The connect rate sits underneath every opener and every objection technique, so it is the first number to look at.
| Metric | Average rep | Top rep |
|---|---|---|
| Dials that reach a person | 5.4% | 13.3% |
| Cold calls per booked meeting | 402 | 45 |
Both rows come from How to Master Cold Calls, published by Gong with 30 Minutes to President's Club in 2024 from more than 300 million calls on Gong's platform.
What this means for a B2B sales team: at the average connect rate, 100 dials reach about five people. A better opener improves what happens with those five. A better list raises the five to thirteen, and that is where the top rep's lead over everyone else starts.
The phone has not faded either. The Bridge Group's 2025 SDR study of 351 B2B companies counts 44 phone activities in a median day of 112. Phone-centric teams average 56 dials and 4.6 quality conversations a day, against 28 dials and 3.4 conversations for email-centric teams.
What this means for a B2B sales team: doubling the dials buys about one more real conversation a day. Volume helps, but slowly. Whatever raises the share of answered calls is worth more than another hour on the phone.
The list sets the connect rate
A list pulled from a database by job title connects at the database's rate. A list of people who did something this week, such as posting about the problem, hiring for it or complaining about a tool, connects better, and the call has something to open on.
What should you prepare before you dial?
Three things: a reason, a time block and the next step you will ask for.
A reason for this person, this week
Gong Labs analysed 90,380 cold calls for its 2018 study of opening lines and found that starting with a clear reason for the call raised the success rate 2.1 times.
What this means for a B2B sales team: write the reason down before you dial. If you cannot finish the sentence "I am calling because you..." with something true about this person, the call is not ready.
Block the morning
The 2024 Gong and 30MPC guide names the morning as the best time of day to cold call. Put one fixed block in the calendar, dial in a batch, and keep email closed until it ends. A block that moves twice a week stops existing.
Know the ask before the call starts
The same guide puts the median successful cold call at 4.8 minutes. That is not long enough to improvise a next step. Decide the meeting length and two slots before you dial, and ask for one of them.
How should you open a cold call?
Ask for a small amount of time, then say why you called. The data on opening lines is consistent across two Gong studies, six years apart.
| Opening line | Success rate (Gong and 30MPC, 2024) |
|---|---|
| Heard your name tossed around (only when it is true) | 11.24% |
| A permission-based opener, asking for a moment first | 11.18% |
| "How's it going?" | 7.6% |
| "Did I catch you at a bad time?" | 2.15% |
What this means for a B2B sales team: the polite opener is the worst one. "Did I catch you at a bad time?" hands the prospect an easy no. Gong's 2018 study found the same thing on different calls: a 0.9 percent success rate against a 1.5 percent baseline, which made a meeting 40 percent less likely.
Then say why you called, in one sentence
Permission buys you a few seconds. Spend them on the reason. "You posted last week that your SDRs spend Mondays building lists" is a reason the prospect recognises, and it leads straight to a question about Mondays.
Field note: the openers I see work best are boring on paper. A name, a permission question and one specific sentence about something the prospect did. Clever openers get a laugh and then a no.
What do you do when the prospect pushes back?
Expect it. Most calls that end in a meeting get through objections on the way.
Gong analysed objections across 300 million cold calls in a 2024 study. The five most common objections account for 74 percent of all objections. Dismissive objections, the "not interested" kind, make up 49.5 percent. Situational ones, such as "no budget right now", are 42.6 percent. "We already have a solution" is only 7.9 percent.
What this means for a B2B sales team: you do not need answers for fifty objections. You need good answers for five, and half of what you hear is a reflex, not a decision. The 2024 guide adds that at a 4.8-minute median, a rep who books the meeting handles at least two objections on the way.
Answer with a question
"Not interested" usually means "I do not know why you are calling". Acknowledge it, repeat the reason in one line, and ask one question about their situation. Then stop talking. Our cold calling script has word tracks for the most common objections.
Talk more than you think, in short turns
Gong's 2021 cold call analysis found that successful cold calls run nearly twice as long as unsuccessful ones, and that reps talk 55 percent of the time on the calls that work. Their longest monologue averaged 53 seconds against 25 on the calls that failed.
What this means for a B2B sales team: on a cold call the prospect has not agreed to anything yet, so the rep carries the conversation. Carry it in short turns, each one ending in a question.
How many times should you call, and do voicemails help?
Five attempts is the useful ceiling, and a voicemail is worth leaving only when an email follows it.
| Attempt | Chance of connecting (Gong and 30MPC, 2024) |
|---|---|
| First call | 7.1% |
| Second call | 7.2% |
| Third call | 6.3% |
| Fourth call | 5.9% |
| Fifth call | 5% |
What this means for a B2B sales team: the second call connects as often as the first, so one missed call is not a signal to give up. After the fifth, the guide says the chance of connecting begins to drop significantly. Move the person to another channel instead of a sixth dial.
Buyers are more patient than reps assume. In RAIN Group's survey of 488 buyers for Top Performance in Sales Prospecting, run in 2017, about 7 in 10 said they accept phone calls from providers they have not worked with, and 43 percent of buyers who accept meetings said five or more attempts were fine.
What this means for a B2B sales team: the data is from 2017, so treat it as a floor on patience rather than a current figure. It still says the fifth attempt is not rude when the first four had a reason.
Leave a voicemail to lift the email after it
The 2024 guide found that voicemails cut the connect rate by 28 percent, but nearly double the reply rate of the email that follows, from 2.73 to 5.87 percent. Leave one short voicemail that names the reason, say an email is coming, and send it within the hour. How the call fits with the rest of the touches is in our guide to sales cadence.
What does your dial count turn into?
Put your own numbers in. The calculator turns daily touches, a reply rate and a meeting rate into meetings held. Try a 5 percent rate and then a 13 percent one to see the gap between the average rep and the top one.
The full version, with the assumptions behind the defaults, is the SDR meetings calculator.
Which US rules apply to a B2B cold call?
Fewer than for calls to consumers, but some still apply. Four points cover most B2B calling.
- Most B2B calls are exempt from the Telemarketing Sales Rule. The FTC's guide to the rule says most calls between a telemarketer and a business are exempt. Calls that sell nondurable office or cleaning supplies are not.
- The Do Not Call Registry does not cover business lines. The FTC states that the registry ban does not apply to business-to-business calls.
- Selling to the person, not the company, is not B2B. A call to a business line that asks an employee to buy something for their own use is not exempt.
- Autodialers and recorded voices need consent on mobiles. The FCC rule at 47 CFR 64.1200 requires prior express consent for calls to a mobile number made with an automatic dialing system or a prerecorded voice. The rule text has no business exception, so a prospect's work mobile counts.
What this means for a B2B sales team: dial by hand, sell to the company and keep a do-not-call list of your own for anyone who asks. State laws add their own rules, and this section is a summary, not legal advice.
How Leadalf gives each call a reason
Leadalf does not dial for you. It works on the part of this article that comes before the call: who goes on the list, and what the first sentence is about.
It watches LinkedIn, Reddit, X, the Meta Ad Library and job postings for people who just said or did something that matches your ICP, scores each one against that ICP, and delivers the people who pass into Instantly, HeyReach or a CSV with the reason attached. The reason is what goes after the permission question.
It gives every name on the list a reason to call. The connect rate and the opener are still your work. How it works walks through the sourcing end to end.
Cold calling tips: FAQ
What is the best time to make cold calls?
The morning. The 2024 cold calling guide from Gong and 30 Minutes to President's Club, built on more than 300 million calls, names it as the best time of day to call. Block it and protect it, because a calling block that keeps getting moved is the most common reason the dials never happen.
How many times should you call a prospect?
Up to five times. In the Gong and 30MPC data the chance of connecting holds at about 7 percent for the first two calls and falls to 5 percent by the fifth. RAIN Group found in 2017 that 43 percent of buyers who accept meetings think five or more attempts are fine, so five attempts are fine when each one has a reason.
What is a good cold calling connect rate?
The average rep in the Gong and 30MPC data connects on 5.4 percent of dials, and the top rep on 13.3 percent. If you sit near 5 percent, the list is usually the problem before the opener is.
Should you leave a voicemail on a cold call?
Leave one when an email follows it. The Gong and 30MPC data shows voicemails cut the connect rate by 28 percent, but a voicemail nearly doubles the reply rate of the email that comes after it, from 2.73 to 5.87 percent.
Is B2B cold calling legal in the US?
Mostly yes. The FTC says most calls between a telemarketer and a business are exempt from the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and business numbers are not covered by the Do Not Call Registry. Autodialed or prerecorded calls to a mobile number still need prior consent under the FCC rules, and selling office or cleaning supplies is not exempt. This is not legal advice.