Last Updated: 23 March, 2022

A comparative analysis of the best times to cold call

Calling at the right time significantly increases your chances of closing a deal. But what exactly is the best time to cold call customers?

Nigel Seah

Digital Marketing Executive

Reading time: 6 minutes

A whopping 70% of salespeople still use cold calls to reach out to their prospects. And based on success statistics, one can easily see why.

But if you want to achieve that level of success, there are certain criteria that need to be met. And one of them is calling your leads at the right time.

So, which are the best and worst times to call your leads? And which days of the week should you make these calls?

In this article, we will examine studies conducted by different sales software companies and corroborate the data to help you find the best timings.

Let’s delve right in!

Best times of the day to make cold calls ⌚

Now, this question is a lot trickier to answer than you think. Let’s examine what different people are saying.

CallHippo says that 11 am - 12 pm and 4 pm - 5 pm windows are the best times to conduct cold calls. — CallHippo says that 11 am – 12 pm and 4 pm – 5 pm windows are the best times to conduct cold calls.

A study by call center software CallHippo revealed that the best time to cold call would be 4 pm – 5 pm. The second window to conduct cold calls is 11 am – 12 pm.

Meanwhile, sales intelligence solution InsightSquared claimed that the best times to make cold calls are between 10 am and 11 am, and 4 pm and 5 pm.

Ok, so there is some sort of overlap here. Let’s take a look at two more studies.

Revenue.io‘s study showed that decision-makers are more likely to engage with cold callers in the late afternoon, especially within the 4 pm to 5 pm hour.

PhoneBurner looked at datasets of 11 million calls over four years and they stated that 10 am and 2 pm are the best times to cold call.

As you can see from all four studies, the best times to make cold calls are between 4 pm and 5 pm, followed by in the late mornings from 10 am to 11 am.

Now, let’s get a better overview of all the timings suggested by all four companies.

Well, this seems logical. Based on all the studies, call connection rates start to dip after 11 am as people are leaving for lunch. And the second dip happens again after 5 pm as people are preparing to wrap up their days.

Best days to make cold calls 🗓️

Now, let’s take a look at what some software companies have to say about the best day to make cold calls.

CallHippo states that Wednesday is the best day to make cold calls. This kind of makes sense given midweek means that half the week was already over and people are looking forward to the weekend. #humpday

Meanwhile, InsightSquared’s study revealed that Tuesdays are the best days to make cold calls with a 10% connect rate.

Yesware’s analysis of over 25,000 sales calls found that weekdays, mainly Tuesdays and Thursdays, were more likely to result in calls lasting longer than five minutes.

Let’s take a look at one more study before coming to a conclusion.

InsideSales’ study of 100,000 call attempts states that Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to make cold calls and qualify leads.

From the above analysis of the studies, I think we can see a clear similarity: the best days to cold call are weekdays, Tuesdays to Thursdays.

Worst time(s) of the week to make cold calls 📅

Based on all the graphs above, you can make some general observations:

The worst days are Mondays and Fridays
The worst times are in the early morning, lunchtime, and towards the end of the day

This comes as no surprise. Well, starting off the work week with a bunch of cold calls can heighten their Monday blues. Also, people tend to spend their Mondays clearing unread emails that accumulated over the weekend.

As for Fridays, people tend to already be in the TGIF mood and could be unwilling to take such sales-related calls. Furthermore, they would’ve probably left their offices early to head home for the weekend or go out for drinks with some friends.

The timings make sense as well. The early mornings are normally meant to clear emails 📧 and settle some administrative issues. Lunchtime 🥡, well, no one’s going to be in the office. And who wants to spend time talking to you as they are rushing to pack up to leave for home? 🏃‍♀️

Combining cold call timing with other factors improves results 😮

Expand your definition of ‘best timings’

While the data I’ve presented holds true, people need to also be able to think beyond the box and expand their definition of ‘best timings’.

For example, certain businesses do receive an increased number of calls to inquire about their product or service during certain periods.

For example, during Cyber Monday sales on Product Hunt, software companies may receive an increased number of calls regarding their promotions. And this means that more follow-up calls will also be made.

Businesses should prepare themselves for such periods that occur throughout the year. Preparing yourself with things like cold call scripts can really help you improve your call quality.

Minimize lead response time

Shortening your lead response time is key to improving your conversion rates.

As you can see from this infographic by KISSMetrics, only 37% of companies respond to inquiries within an hour.

And for companies who don’t respond within the hour, they can lose up to 50% of their leads. And that’s a LOT. In fact, responding to your leads within a minute increases your chances of converting them by 400%.

As you can see, the shorter your lead response time, the higher the odds of your converting your leads. While this may seem like common sense, we all know by now that common sense isn’t that common 🙃🙃🙃

Imagine minimizing lead response time and making a cold call to respond to a query at the optimal timing. This can really bring about several benefits including increased conversion rates, improving customer satisfaction, and customer experience.

Automate your cold calls with autodialers

Gone are the days where you waste precious time manually dialing in your prospects’ numbers. Ain’t nobody got time for that!

To quickly make cold calls, many businesses use autodialers to automate their cold call campaigns. For example, with Novocall’s outbound dialer, you can upload a list of contacts and let the dialer do the work for you!

Novocall's Outbound dialer easily sets up your cold call campaigns. — Novocall’s Outbound dialer easily sets up your cold call campaigns.

You just need to sit back and wait for someone to answer your call.

Be persistent

A huge number of salespeople, 44% to be exact, give up after one follow-up call not being successful.

But giving up after just one cold call is just too soon.

In fact, following up with your leads with 5 follow-up calls can actually increase the success rates by 70%!

Constantly remind yourself that sales is a multiple-touchpoint process

It can take between 7 and over 13 touchpoints to close a deal.

These include cold calls, email nurturing campaigns, and email follow-ups. This means that businesses need to be super detailed in their planning when mapping out the entire customer journey and sales outreach process.

What's next?

While multiple sources have claimed pretty similar optimal timings and days to make cold calls, we can be sure of 1 thing.

Best timings are only one of the many factors out there that can improve your results. This, of course, does not invalidate the studies I quoted in this article.

It just means that there are more factors you need to consider before making drawing a conclusion.

That’s all folks! I hope this article has helped you gain a better understanding of the best cold call timings. For more sales and marketing articles like this, subscribe to our blog below 👇

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Nigel Seah

Nigel is a Digital Marketing Executive at Novocall where he specializes in SEO. Prior to this, he had written for several SaaS companies including Workstream and the now defunct Hatchme. In his free time, he engages in strength training and is a lover of languages.

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