Is cold calling dead? (Here's what data from 300M calls says)

This article is part of a special Gong Labs x 30 Minutes to President’s Club cold calling series in celebration of our book release: Cold Calling Sucks (And That’s Why It Works). If you like this, read chapter 1 for free or subscribe to Gong Labs and 30MPC for more data-backed sales tips.

Every other day, someone makes a new LinkedIn post claiming that cold calling is dead.

I get it. If you can send 3,000 emails with a click of a button, why spend hours on the phone when most of your cold calls won’t even connect?

We wanted to know too. 

So we analyzed 300M+ cold calls to settle the debate: Is cold calling actually dead?

We’ll break down the cold call results from top reps vs. average reps to answer this question in two parts:

1. How many cold calls does it take to book a meeting?
2. How do cold calls impact email replies? (even if you don’t connect)

Along the way, we’ll give benchmarks for connect rates, set rates, and email reply rates.

While cold calling may not seem worthwhile for the average rep, it can have a serious impact on those following best practices.   

Spoiler Alert: It pays to be in the top 25% of cold callers. If you want to know why, keep reading. 

How many cold calls does it take to book a meeting?

You can answer this question by starting with the number of cold calls it takes to book a meeting and then determining whether it’s worth it.

First, we need to look at connect rates.

The connect rate is calculated by taking the total number of calls answered by a prospect and dividing that by the total number of dials made by a rep. The average rep only connects with 5.4% of prospects, whereas the top quartile reps connect with 13.3% of their prospects:

That means it takes 19 cold calls for an average rep to get one conversation, but it only takes 8 cold calls for a top-quartile rep to connect with a prospect.

How? The top quartile reps work smarter, not harder. They prioritize direct dials, numbers that put them straight through to the contact they're trying to reach. They also take the time to mark their bad numbers, so if their contact information is bad, they never make the mistake of dialing a dead phone number twice.  

Now that we’ve determined our connect rates, we need to figure out set rates or how many conversations it takes to book a meeting: 

Similarly, the top reps booked more than 3x the meetings of the average rep (16.7% vs 4.6%).

How? Not only are top quartile reps better on the phones, but they also target the prospects who are most likely to buy. This should be based on demographic, firmographic, or activity data. For example, when I was selling compensation software at Pave, we’d prioritize the prospects who:

• Had a problem now: Have an upcoming compensation review, fundraised within the last 3 months, or hiring a compensation person.
• Had a problem at all: Growing over 10% per year, referenced “generous equity compensation” in job postings.
• Anyone else in our ideal customer profile: Any other venture-backed tech companies over 250 employees 

Now that we have the two components let’s break down the math.

Assume each rep makes 200 dials per week for an entire month for a total of 800 dials:

The data shows that the average rep books only 2 meetings each month, whereas the top rep books a whopping 18 meetings.

From just one hour of cold calling per day.

But wait, there’s more.

How do cold calls impact email replies? (even if you don’t connect)

It’s not just the meetings you’ll get on the calls.

Every cold call you make and voicemail you leave draws attention back to your emails, so you book even more meetings across other channels.

Cold calling nearly doubles your email reply rate (3.44% vs 1.81%) even if you don’t connect live:

So between those 18 extra meetings a month and whatever comes from the increase in your email reply rate of every email you send.

You’re telling me it’s not worth 1 hour a day to cold call?

The Verdict: Cold Calling Sucks (And That’s Why It Works)

Is cold calling dead for the average rep? Yes.

Why? Because the average rep dials when it’s convenient, uses the same canned openers, and stops once they get hit with one or two nasty objections.

But for the top reps, cold calling can nearly generate one meeting per hour.

Cold calling sucks. And that’s exactly why it works.

The bar for the average rep is set so low that it’s not that hard to break into the top quartile of reps if you commit to mastering the game. We wrote this book to reveal what best practices separate these top performers. 

In Cold Calling Sucks (And That’s Why It Works), we broke down every part of a cold call and partnered with Gong to back the advice with data from 300M+ cold calls.

In the most actionable sales book ever, you’ll find:

1. Every step of a cold call, broken down from opener to objection
2. Talk tracks with voiceovers (in QR codes) to master tone
3. Examples, no matter what you sell from over 200+ President’s Club sellers 
4.  All backed by data from 300M+ cold calls on Gong

If you’re ready, you can preview chapter 1 of the book for free and pre-order it here.