Salespeople often want to know, ‘how long should a Cold Call last?’ Here are some guidelines and advice.

According to a Sales Hacker stat from Jan 2021, “The most striking difference between cold calls that result in a meeting and those that don’t comes down to how long you can keep the prospect on the phone.”

Successful calls, which they defined as resulting in a “held, follow-up meeting”, lasted on average, [5:50] minutes vs [3:14] for unsuccessful calls.

This aligns with my advice which is that Cold Calls should be between 4 – 9 minutes long.

Calls that last less than [4:00] minutes don’t give you enough time to get the information you need and/or reflect the prospect’s lack of interest and attention.

Cold Calls that go beyond [9:00] minutes DO NOT usually result in a meeting. And if you are on for 11, 12 13 minutes, that is usually just wasted time.

It is important to remember that you don’t want to get into a lengthy conversation.  If you are on too long, you will find yourself going into sales mode – which is NOT good!

Cold Calls are for discovery – we are trying to evaluate whether or not they are a good fit and to set an appointment – not sell.

Once you set the appointment, you will have time to research and prepare for that first-time appointment which will be longer. That call should be a 30 – 45 minute conversation.

To get there, make the most of those first 4 – 9 minutes. Have a Cold Call script which is filled with the questions you need answered to determine if this is a qualified prospect. Then be sure to LISTEN to those answers and if appropriate, set that appointment.

The timer is ticking – pick up that phone and get dialing! 

Do YOU need help crafting a more effective Cold Calling Script? Give me a call at 908.879.2911 – we can get you and your team up and running with a tight script that gets YOU more qualified leads!