How Much Research Preparation Should You Do Before a Cold Call (Ask Jeb)

How much research should you do before making a cold call?

Here’s a question that exposes one of the most common productivity killers in sales: how much research should you do before making a cold call?

That’s the challenge Michael Bricker from West Monroe, Louisiana, brought to a recent Ask Jeb episode. 

Five months into his role at Cantara Networks, a fiber-backed internet provider, Michael was supposed to spend three minutes researching each prospect. Instead, he found himself spending 15 to 30 minutes per call, terrified he’d miss the one critical insight that would unlock the door.

Sound familiar? 

If you’re nodding right now, you’re not alone. Research shows that perfectionism and paralysis are two of the sneakiest productivity traps in prospecting, because they lead to procrastination. It’s why we train participants in our Fanatical Prospecting Bootcamps how to get past the 3Ps.

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Listen to the full episode:

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The Big Lie Your Brain Tells You

Let’s get one thing straight: Research is not prospecting. Research is research.

Every minute you spend digging through a prospect’s LinkedIn profile, reading their latest press release, or analyzing their org chart during your call block takes you away from actual prospecting.  

And if you are not picking up the phone and making the cold calls, you won’t build your pipeline, which makes all of that research worthless. 

But here’s where it gets dangerous. 

When you add in the basic human fear of cold calling, research becomes an emotional crutch. Your brain lies to you and whispers, “If I just know all this information, it’ll be so much better.” 

Research is the perfect hiding place. It looks like work. It feels productive. Your manager walks by, sees you studying a prospect’s website, and nobody can accuse you of slacking. 

But planning to plan to plan to cold call IS NOT COLD CALLING. As my friend Victor Antonio likes to say, “Planning to do the thing is not doing the thing.”  

I’ve watched this movie during hundreds of live call blocks in our cold-calling training sessions. A participant spends 15 minutes of a 20-minute call block researching, then makes the call, only to reach voicemail. All that research, for nothing. 

Meanwhile, the other participants around them are dialing with minimal information and setting appointments. Procrastination is a leading reason why people fail at cold calling. 

Cold Calling is Like Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

Of course, people argue with me. “No, Jeb, you’re wrong! You have to do the research! Otherwise, you show up like a wanker.” (shout out to Ted Lasso)

Yes, if you are dialing a Fortune 500 CEO and you have one shot at it, do deep research so that you don’t show up like a wanker.

But, let’s be honest, sellers are rarely in this situation.

For most cold calls, all you need is enough information to set an appointment. It’s horseshoes and hand grenades. You don’t need to be perfect, just good enough to set the appointment. And if your message misses, you have many chances to adjust and try again. 

The Cold Calling Research Math the Research Gurus Always Leave Out

Michael didn’t invent the 15- to 30-minute research session. He absorbed it from LinkedIn, AI questions, and internet searches that validated his own bias. The “do your research” trope is everywhere.

Search “how to prepare for cold calls,” and the experts line up to tell you:

• “Spend fifteen to thirty minutes researching each prospect.”
• “Study their tech stack, their funding history, and their entire LinkedIn presence.”
• “Never dial a number you haven’t built a plan for.”

It sounds responsible and reasonable until you do the arithmetic.

A modest 60-minute call block runs 25 dials. At 15 minutes of research per prospect, that’s over 6 hours of preparation for 1 hour of calling. Nobody does that, though, because there isn’t enough time in the day.

So instead, they make significantly fewer calls. Instead of 25, they make 3-4. Which means they set no appointments, their pipeline suffers, and when called out on their thin pipeline, they complain that they don’t have enough time.

Meanwhile, Cognism’s analysis of over 200,000 cold calls puts the average success rate at 2.7 percent or roughly one meeting per thirty-seven conversations. Participants in Sales Gravy’s Cold Calling Edge training typically achieve a 25:1 ratio using our proven five-step framework.

The truth is, cold calling is a volume game with a skill multiplier. It only works when there is quantity and quality. But that means there is always a trade-off.

When cold call preparation tanks call volume, the system breaks. And though the LinkedIn parade of fools bangs the research drum relentlessly, what they are essentially advocating is cold-call sabotage with a checklist.

This is why I always give you the cold truth about cold calling. No BS, no pandering, no dressing it up.

How Much Cold-Calling Preparation Do You Actually Need?

The balance between quantity and quality is simple.

• First, block off specific time to build your list and conduct research.
• Second, keep research to no more than 2 minutes per prospect.
• Third, get comfortable with not knowing everything.

Michael’s lightbulb moment happened when he started thinking differently about the objective of his cold calls. He realized, “I’m not looking to make a sale on that initial cold call. I’m looking to make a connection.” This breakthrough was the key to solving the research habit that was holding him back.

It’s this insight that separates Fanatical Prospectors with massive pipelines from research addicts who struggle with making enough calls.

The primary objective of your cold call is to either set an appointment or gather qualifying information. That’s it. You are not selling, trying to make friends, or building a relatioship.

The exception to this rule is with inbound lead follow-up. With some hot, qualified inbound leads you may dive directly into a sales conversation. But this does not apply to routine cold calls where the job is to set an appointment or gather information.

How much do you really need to know to set that appointment or ask a couple of qualifying questions? The answer is, not much. About two minutes of work to learn:

• what the company does
• challenges they may be facing
• the role of the person you are calling
• a quick relevant hook (because statement) that gives that person a reason to say yes

I teach this, preach it, and demonstrate it to the sales professionals I train and coach. The evidence backs me up.

An analysis of one million cold outreach messages found that one or two highly specific details beat stacks of generic personalization. Now that’s email data, not phone data, but the lesson transfers: relevance is the secret and being relevant is not complicated nor does it require hours of research.

Pattern Recognition is the Fastest Path to Relevant Cold Call Messages

Your best research tool is not LinkedIn, AI, or a Google search. Rather, it is simply pattern recognition and intuition.

The more you talk to your customers, and businesses like the one you’re about to call, the more insight you gain into what is relevant to them. When they hit you with objections, you learn what doesn’t work and make adjustments.

Talk with ten prospects, in the same role type, in the same industry vertical you learn that they all face the same challenges. You don’t need 15 minutes of research to recognize those patterns. You just to make the calls and pay attention.

Creating targeted messages for roles or industries instead of personalizing every single call unlocks prospecting efficiency.

If you’re calling 25 CIOs in the healthcare sector, you and I could sit down and quickly identify what they’re dealing with, what issues they’re facing, what they want to accomplish, and how we can help them.

We could build one or two messages that’ll connect with most people on that list without researching every single prospect. We’ll miss the mark with some people and that is ok becasue volume beats being perfect with every message and scores us more meetings.

Block Research Time Before Your Call Block, Never During

If you feel like you absolutely need to research each prospect (and I get it, some people do), start with this rule: research is not prospecting.

What that means is never do research during your prospecting block. Block time to do it in advance. This allows you to focus on one thing at a time, which will make you far more efficient at both tasks.

Do all your two-minute lookups in one batch, and write your notes next to each name. Then go make the calls. Nothing but calls. That separation is how top reps make so many cold calls while everyone else is still organizing their tabs.

Protecting your golden hours for prospecting sales activity matters. Salesforce’s State of Sales research found reps spend less than 30 percent of their golden hours actually selling. Why? Because they belive that doing things like research is activity that counts.

Here’s a wake-up call: It isn’t! So block non-selling activities like research outside of the golden hours.

When Research Actually Matters

Before you throw all research out the window, let me be clear about when it matters.

If you’re sending a cold prospecting email, do some research. You’re putting something in writing, so you’d better send a message that isn’t AI-generated garbage.

If you make a call, get a hard no from the CEO, do the research. Then call back with a more relevant message. If that doesn’t work, adjust and try it again.

If you’re prepping for a first-time appointment, a discovery meeting, or meeting with a nine-person buying committee, absolutely do your research. Not to do so would be stupid.

But for that first cold call? Stop overthinking it. Dial, get to the point, be as relevant as possible, ask for the appointment, and handle objections. You won’t be perfect, but you will be far more successful than the reps who seek perfectionism.

The 2-Minute Cold Call Research Preparation Check List

Here is my 2-minute cold call research check list. Steal it and make it your own.

1. Target list built in a previous time block, at least 25 dials deep
2. Two minutes of batched research done per prospect, notes next to each name (the three checks below)
3. A single targeted because statement for the list based on patterns, research, and relevance
4. One call objective for the list: set appointments or gather information
5. Objection turn-around scripts prepared for the top four most likely objections

Where your two minutes of research go, in order:

Your CRM (30 seconds). Have we touched this account before? Old notes, open opportunities, a colleague’s history. Nothing kills a call faster than not knowing your own company already talked to them.

LinkedIn (45 seconds). Title, tenure, one recent post or job change. Look for trigger events.

Company website or news (45 seconds). What they do, in their own words, plus one trigger event if it’s sitting in plain sight: expansion, funding, new product, new leadership.

Three checks, one or two usable details, done. Anything beyond this is just procrastination in sheep’s clothing.

Your two minutes per prospect should help you find pattenrs that sharpen your targeted because statement, the specific reason this call is worth this person’s time.

The data on it is blunt. Gong’s analysis of 90,380 cold calls found reps who plainly stated the reason for their call booked meetings at 2.1 times the rate of those who didn’t.

Bonus: The AI Cold Call Prep Prompt

Use it in your list-building block, never during your call block. Paste one prospect at a time:

“You are my pre-call research assistant. I sell [what you sell] to [who you sell to]. Research [prospect name], [title] at [company]. Give me exactly five bullets and nothing else: (1) what the company does, in one sentence. (2) This person’s role and tenure. (3) One recent trigger event such as funding, expansion, a leadership change, or a product launch, with the date. (4) One problem people in this role at companies like this typically face that connects to what I sell. (5) A one-sentence because statement I could open my call with. If you can’t verify something, say so instead of guessing. Keep the whole answer under 100 words.”

Pro tip: For more AI sales tips, read my book The AI Edge

The Real Truth About Cold Call Preparation

Research is not prospecting. The goal isn’t to feel completely comfortable and know everything before you make a call. That is a losing tactic. If you’re researching every prospect before every cold call, your productivity will fall off of a cliff and you will fail.

So batch your research in its own time block and run my 2 minute cold call preparation drill. Then dial.

The goal is to talk with as many people as you possibly can during your prospecting blocks because the more people you talk with, the more appointments you’ll set.

Related article: Why Cold Calling Will Never Die

Related E-Learning: Cold Calling + Social Selling Strategies