Cold calling: how to cold call, the techniques that work and how many dials it takes

This guide is for SDRs, account executives and founders who want to add calling to their outbound, or who call already and want more meetings from the same hours. It covers the whole job in order: deciding whether calling fits, the steps of a call, the techniques worth using, how many dials you'll need, and the rules. It links to the detailed pages rather than repeating them: the cold calling scripts for word-for-word openers and branches, the cold calling statistics for every benchmark and its source, and AI cold calling for dialers and voice agents.

What cold calling is, and when it's worth doing

Cold calling means phoning someone who hasn't asked you to call, usually a business buyer you've never spoken to, to open a sales conversation. A warm call goes to someone who has shown interest (downloaded something, replied to an email, been referred). Telemarketing is the broader legal term for selling by phone, and most of its strictest rules are written for calls to consumers at home, not businesses.

Calling isn't right for every seller. Use this table to decide how much of your outbound it should carry. It's guidance from practice, not a rule:

How to cold call, step by step

1. Pick accounts with a reason to call this week. A new location, a key hire, a funding round, a contract coming up for renewal, a leadership change. Gong found its top-quartile reps targeted the prospects most likely to buy; that, not phone skill, is most of the gap. The sales prospecting techniques guide covers where reasons come from.
2. Find the right person and a number that reaches them. A direct dial or a business mobile number beats a switchboard. Mark bad numbers as you find them, which Gong also saw top reps do. If enrichment returns a personal mobile, treat it with more care (see the rules below).
3. Fill in a call card before you dial. One checked fact with its date and source, what it probably means for this person, one piece of proof and the meeting you'll ask for. If you can't fill the fact box, skip the account for now. The call prep card is free to copy.
4. Block the time. Calling works in blocks: 60 to 90 minutes, same time each day, with the call cards ready so you're dialing, not researching. Most teams find late morning and mid-afternoon in the prospect's time zone work, but test your own data.
5. Open in under 20 seconds. Your name and company, the reason you're calling them, and a way for them to choose to keep listening. Say plainly that it's a cold call. Gong's 2024 data found a permission-based opener that owns the cold call among the best performers (11.18% success) and "Did I catch you at a bad time?" among the worst (2.15%).
6. Ask, don't pitch. Offer a problem hypothesis they can correct ("Usually when a group adds two sites, covering a sick day turns into an hour of phone calls. Is that true for you?"), then ask one or two open questions. Let silences run.
7. Treat the brush-off as information. "Send me an email", "we use someone already" and "not interested" each have a short, honest reply that ends in a question. The objection handling guide has them.
8. Ask for a small, specific next step. A 15-minute call on a named day and time, with a purpose. Not a demo, not "a chat sometime".
9. Leave a voicemail and send an email within the hour. Gong found prospects who received a cold call replied to email at 3.44%, against 1.81% for those who didn't, even when the call didn't connect. Use the voicemail script and the follow-up email after a cold call.
10. Log the outcome and schedule the next attempt. Plan three to five attempts over two to three weeks, each adding something new. In WHAM's 2025 calling data, published by Cognism, three attempts captured 93% of all conversations and five captured 98.6%. Stop at once if someone asks you not to call.

Cold calling techniques that work

These are the techniques with the best support in published call data and in practice. Each one fits a different moment in the call.

Gong's opener studies are correlations across millions of calls, not controlled tests, so treat them as a starting point. The statistics page lists every opener figure with its sample.

Cold calling tips from teams that do it daily

• Prepare the list the day before. Research during a calling block halves your dials.
• Call two people at each account. The person you want and the person who'd feel the problem. If one says "not me", ask who it is.
• Stand by your caller ID. Show a number people can call back. FCC rules require telemarketers to transmit caller ID, and the number must let anyone make a do-not-call request during business hours.
• Keep the opener in your own words. Learn the five parts, not the sentences. Prospects hear reading.
• Listen to five of your calls a week. Note the words prospects use for their problem and reuse them. If you record, tell the other person at the start.
• Change one thing at a time. A new opener, a new time slot or a new segment, run for at least 100 dials before you judge it.
• Write down every "not now" with a date. Timing objections are the cheapest meetings you'll book next quarter.

How many dials it takes: plan your numbers

Published benchmarks give you a starting point. In Gong's analysis of more than 300 million cold calls, the average rep connected on 5.4% of dials and booked a meeting from 4.6% of conversations; the top quartile managed 13.3% and 16.7%. Gong's own example: from 800 dials a month, the average rep books 2 meetings and the top rep books 18. The Bridge Group's 2025 survey of 351 B2B companies found phone-centric SDR teams average 56 dials and 4.6 quality conversations a day.

The arithmetic for your own plan:

Dials needed = meetings wanted / (connect rate x set rate x show rate)

Worked example: eight meetings a month

Illustrative example. The company, rep and numbers are invented to show the arithmetic.

Dana sells fleet tracking for Tidewater Fleet (tidewater.example) to HVAC and plumbing contractors with 20 to 100 vans. She wants 8 held meetings a month from calling, over 20 working days, and dials about 20 numbers an hour by hand. Last quarter she connected on 7% of dials, booked from 8% of conversations, and 80% of booked meetings were held.

The arithmetic for the first row: 0.07 x 0.08 x 0.8 = 0.00448 held meetings per dial, so 1 / 0.00448 = 223 dials per held meeting, and 8 x 223 = 1,786 dials a month. At 89 dials a day, Dana would be calling for most of her day, well above the Bridge Group's 56-dial average. Fixing the numbers and calling only contractors with a reason (a new branch, a fleet manager hire, vans listed for sale) brings the same 8 meetings in about two hours a day.

Two lessons: the list moves the result more than the pitch, and 8 meetings from 40 or so conversations is a small sample, so judge a change over a full quarter. At volume, finding the reason to call is the slow part; Bebop researches each account in the list and gives you the people, the trigger and the angle to open with.

The rules, in brief

This is general information, not legal advice. The full guide is is cold calling legal.

• United States, business calls. The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule exempts most calls to businesses, except calls selling nondurable office or cleaning supplies. Since a 2024 amendment, its bans on misrepresentation and false or misleading statements apply to business calls too. The National Do Not Call Registry is for personal numbers; business numbers aren't covered.
• Autodialers, recordings and AI voices. Under the FCC's rule at 47 CFR 64.1200, a telemarketing call to a mobile number using an autodialer or an artificial or prerecorded voice needs the person's prior express written consent. The FCC confirmed in February 2024 that AI-generated voices count as artificial voices. A live rep dialing by hand isn't covered by that rule.
• States. Several states go further. Florida, Oklahoma and Maryland, for example, bar sales calls before 8am or after 8pm and more than three calls in 24 hours on the same subject, and their business-to-business exemptions are narrow.
• United Kingdom. Live B2B calls are allowed unless the number is on the Corporate Telephone Preference Service or, for sole traders and some partnerships, the Telephone Preference Service, or the business has told you not to call.

Self-check before you scale calling

Answer yes or no. Three or more noes means fix the list and the setup before you add dials or rewrite the script.

• Can you name a dated reason to call for at least two-thirds of tomorrow's accounts?
• Do you have a direct dial or business mobile for at least half your contacts?
• Can you say your opener out loud in under 20 seconds?
• Do you know the two questions you'll ask if they start talking?
• Is every call followed by a voicemail and an email the same hour?
• Do you log connect rate, set rate and show rate separately?
• Do you have a do-not-call list that every rep checks before dialing?
• Have you checked the rules for the states and countries you call into?

Pitfalls

• Judging the script on a bad list. A low connect rate is a data problem; only a low conversation or set rate points at what you say.
• Pitching in the first minute. The prospect can only answer "not interested". Ask a question they can answer.
• Asking for a demo on the first call. Ask for 15 minutes with a purpose. The demo comes after they agree there's a problem.
• One attempt and done. Most conversations come from the second and third attempts.
• Calling personal mobiles with a dialer. Parallel and predictive dialers raise the autodialer question; keep consent-free calls dialed by a person, and check with counsel before you automate.
• Ignoring a "don't call me". It's the fastest way to a complaint, and in the UK a business that objects must not be called again.

Next step: write your openers and branches with the cold calling scripts, each starting from a checked reason to call.