Everyone hates to do it, and in truth there are few people who are good at it.  And even though an earlier blog post from us talked about the increasing difficulty in selling over the phone, particularly to younger professionals, we do encourage sales organizations to make outreach a part of their strategies for acquiring new accounts.

In fact, one of our clients with a particularly well-oiled sales machine has generated millions of dollars in new account revenue from their targeted cold calling campaigns.

So, with that in mind, I was sent these latest statistics on cold calling and telephone selling recently by sales veteran Tim May, who runs sales at our client N2Net. (Author’s admission:  Tim gives full credit to pulling these from one of his LinkedIn contacts, Emma Marriott, Business Development Manager at Pingala Media!)

1. The best time to cold call is between 4:00-5:00pm.  The second best is 8:00-10:00am. The worst times are 11:00am and 2:00pm.  (InsideSales and Kellogg School of Business)

2. Thursday is the best day to prospect.  Wednesday is the second best day.  Tuesday is the worst day.  (InsideSales)

3. In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect.  Today it takes 8 attempts.  (TeleNet and Ovation Sales Group)

4. 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting.  44% of sales people give up after 1 follow-up.  (The Marketing Donut)

5. After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember stories.  Only 5% remember statistics.  (Chip and Dan Heath)

6. 70% of people make purchasing decisions to solve problems.  30% make decisions to gain something.   (Impact Communications)

7. Each year, you’ll lose 14% of your customers.   (BusinessBrief)

8. Prospects that buy have 58% more objections than prospects who don’t.  Learn to appreciate objections as they provide opportunities to solve customer problems.

9. The #1 reason Customers buy from you isn't service, selection, quality or price -- it's your confidence! (Guerilla Selling)

Having said all this, that doesn’t mean cold calling should replace digital marketing.  In fact, assigning a warm lead or even hot opportunity that came in from the website is a FAR better use of sales time and resources than relying on cold calling alone.  It’s just that both should be part of the mix, and just as with any strategy, there’s no single path to pursue.