Short Answer
The best time to cold call is first thing in the morning. For most B2B teams that means 7 to 10am. Your prospect is still at their desk before the day buries them, and you are at your most confident and fresh. Mid-week beats the edges of the week too. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday win in nearly every study ever run. But here is the truth most timing advice ignores. The gap between the best hour and the worst hour is tiny, the studies flat out contradict each other, and the sales pros who cold call every morning will bury those hunting for magic cold calling windows.
Key Takeaways
- Mornings win for most B2B teams. Block 7 to 10am and call.
- Tuesday through Thursday beat Monday and Friday in almost every study.
- The studies contradict each other on the best hour. That tells you something.
- Those studies mostly measure when reps choose to call, not when prospects answer. Most reps procrastinate to the afternoon, so mornings are the open lane.
- You make better calls fresh. You are sharper at 8am than you are at 4pm.
- The prospect’s local time zone matters more than yours.
- Most prospects take five or more attempts. Timing won’t save you from quitting early.
- The best time to call is the time you’ll actually do it. Every day.
The One Question Everyone Asks
“Jeb, what’s the best time to call? Is there an hour when people are more likely to pick up? A day of the week that beats the others?”
I get this question more than any other from brand-new reps to twenty-year veterans. They are all seeking the same thing. A magic window that makes cold calling easy. When prospects answer happy, say yes without a fight, and book the meeting themselves.
Here’s What the Studies Say About the Best Time to Cold Call
Companies publish reports about cold call timing because it’s amazingly good clickbait. Almost anything written about cold calling gets attention, because salespeople are always on the lookout for data points that support excuses for NOT cold calling.
You can almost certainly find a stat that confirms your bias that a particular time of day or week doesn’t work for cold calling.
Here’s the straight picture:
The clearest finding. Almost every study lands in the same place. The middle of the week beats the ends.
ZoomInfo analyzed 1.4 million outbound calls and found Tuesday and Wednesday are the strongest days, with those two producing 44% of all booked demos and Tuesday posting the highest connect rate.
Monday and Friday are the weakest in almost every report. It makes sense if you consider how business people run their weeks. Mondays they are crazy busy and Fridays they are often out of the office (especially with so many people working from home at the edges of the week).
The best-time edges are tiny. One well-known (click bait worthy) study found its best day was barely one percent better than its worst day.
Friday afternoon exception: Many B2B sales professionals swear by cold calling on Friday afternoons late when gatekeepers are out and decision makers are in a good mood. My personal experience reflects this. I’m a big fan of late friday afternoon cold calling blocks. I’ve found that high-level decision makers are especially impressed with salespeople who are still grinding on Fridays.
The best time of day for cold calls is inconclusive. Time of day is where the studies start fighting each other and are all over the board. For example: CallHippo, looking at 52,000 calls, says 4 to 5pm is the best window, Cognism’s data says 10 to 11am.
So the experts say morning, late morning, and late afternoon, depending on which one you read. However, they do agree on a few things:
- Skip the lunch lull from 12pm to 2pm.
- Your prospect’s local time zone matters more than yours.
- And most prospects take five to eleven attempts before you ever get them live.
So if the smartest data teams in the business can’t agree on the best time to cold call, then is there really a best time of day?
The Sales Gravy Answer for Timing Your Cold Calls
At Sales Gravy our trainers conduct hundreds of live call blocks on the training room floor during The Cold Calling Edge™ training and Fanatical Prospecting® Bootcamps. We do this across a wide cross-section of industries and have recorded the numbers for over 20 years. The pattern never changes.
We know with absolute certainty that the sellers we work with connect with more prospects, set more meetings, and perform at a higher level in the mornings between 7am and 10am than they do in the afternoons. Significantly better.
Why We Say Morning, Even When Some Data Says Afternoon
First, is the catch in the data that everyone misses. Those studies are not measuring morning versus afternoon. They are measuring when salespeople choose to call.
The problem is that most salespeople procrastinate because they don’t like prospecting. They’ll put off prospecting all morning and won’t pick up the phone until the afternoon. So the afternoon is where the overwhelming majority of the dials are actually happening.
Therefore, the data isn’t comparing the same rep calling at 8am and again at 4pm (which, BTW, is exactly what we study and record during our live call blocks in training). Instead, it’s comparing a nearly empty morning against a jammed afternoon, then crowning the afternoon the winner. It’s measuring rep behavior, not the efficacy of picking a certain time to cold call.
Follow that all the way down and it makes the case for mornings even stronger. If the morning looks like a bad time to call in the studies, it is not because prospects won’t answer and agree to appointments early. It is because very few salespeople kick off their day with prospecting.
The good news for you is this makes a morning cold call block an open lane. With fewer salespeople fighting for attention it easier to stand out and convert calls into appointments.
Call When Your Confidence and Energy Peak
Cold calling is the most challenging sales activity. It is rejection dense and uncomfortable. It requires a ton of discipline, confidence, will-power, and energy.
When your confidence and energy peak each day? It’s the morning. That’s when you feel your best and perform your best.
Your sales day is like working out in the gym. At the beginning of a workout you move faster, lift heavier weights, and drive harder. But by the end of a workout your muscles are fatigued. You are tired. You move slower. The amount of weight you can lift diminishes. Your mind tells you to quit. You want to quit.
This is why it is a stone cold fact that if you wait until the end of your day when you are mentally fatigued to cold call:
- You are far more likely to do so with lower energy and enthusiasm.
- You sound less convincing.
- You are much more likely to give up when you get push back rather than confidently handling objections.
- And it is a fact that, in your state of exhaustion, you are far more likely to procrastinate and push your call block off to the next day.
Fresh, confident sellers calling a so-called “bad time” will outperform fried, exhausted sales reps calling at the “perfect time” every day of the week.
Call When Your Prospects are Most Receptive
Likewise, your prospects are generally more receptive and open at the beginning of their day. They are still at their desk settling in, coffee in hand, working through email before the meetings and the fires start. By afternoon they are buried with problems and often in back to back meetings.
They are less overwhelmed at the start of the day than at the end which makes it easier for them to agree to meetings. And, they are nicer when they get interrupted.
Your prospects are human just like you. By the end of the day, they are exhausted, overwhelmed with the “alligators” they’ve been fighting and frankly, they’re grumpy.
Even if you ignore my arguments and believe that the afternoon from 4pm to 5pm is better for cold calling, you cannot ignore the truth that it is not better emotionally for you or your prospects. This is exactly why the CallHippo study is so ludicrous.
The Real Secret About Timing Your Cold Calls
Most of what has been written about call timing is just confusing noise that provides less-than-eager-to-prospect salespeople with an easy excuse to put off telephone prospecting until tomorrow or this afternoon or anytime other than now.
I’ve heard every version of timing excuses.
- Can’t call Monday, everybody’s ramping up for the week.
- Can’t call Friday, they’re checking out early.
- Can’t call in the morning, they’re not settled yet.
- Can’t call before lunch, can’t call after lunch, can’t call during meetings, can’t call at the end of the day.
String those excuses together and you’ve talked yourself out of an entire week of prospecting. Then the pipeline goes dry and you end up like so many other sellers, looking for the secret code that will solve the pipeline problem YOU created.
Here’s the real truth that no one wants to acknowledge because it takes away the excuses. There is no secret code. There is no timing easy button. Attempting to time your cold calls is wickedly poor strategy.
So, forget about timing your calls and commit instead to a daily, first-thing-in-the-morning call block. Be consistent. Schedule a call block every day.
Consistency yields far better cold calling results than perfect timing ever will. Think about it like investing. The investor who tries to time the market almost always loses to the one who invests the same amount on a set schedule, month after month, no matter what the market is doing.
Prospecting is no different. The math is ALWAYS on the side of the sales pro who prospects consistently every single day.
So, the best day to cold call? Everyday
The best time to call? At the beginning of your sales day when you are fresh or NOW.
Stop the activity trap and start measuring the real-time metrics that fill your pipeline. Download the official Fanatical Prospecting dial tracking system designed to help you maintain the discipline required to turn prospecting blocks into qualified appointments.
FAQs About Timing Cold Calls
For most B2B teams, first thing in the morning, 7 to 10am. Prospects are still at their desks and sales reps are fresh. Some studies point to late afternoon, but the differences are small, and morning is when calls actually get made with energy, enthusiasm, can confidence.
Tuesday through Thursday beat Monday and Friday in nearly every study. In ZoomInfo’s analysis of 1.4 million calls, Tuesday and Wednesday alone produced 44% of booked demos. But the highest performing cold callers are consistent. They schedule call blocks everyday.
Not always. Some senior decision makers are easier to reach right after normal hours, once the gatekeepers have gone home. But for most B2B prospecting, energy drops late in the day for you and the prospect, so it’s not your strongest window.
For most B2B selling, no. Offices are typically closed. The exceptions are small business owners who are often at their desks on Saturday mornings catching up from the week. This can be a surprisingly good time to reach this segment of decision makers.
Early, before their day fills up. Key decision makers are often at their desk first thing and buried by mid-morning. Catch them in the first hour or two of the workday, in their local time zone, and you get your best shot.
Earlier than most industries. Decision makers in these fields are out on the job site, the plant floor, or in the field by mid-morning, so the desk window is short. Call before they leave the office, often 6:30 to 8am, and you’ll reach far more of them than you will in the afternoon.
Far less than most people think. The gap between the best and worst windows is small, and the studies contradict each other. Consistency beats timing. The sales rep who prospects every morning will out-produce the one who waits for the perfect timing.
Related article: Can You Actually Make Cold Calling Fun?
Related e-learning: The Four Best Times to Make Outbound Prospecting Calls
