How to Improve Call Connect Rate

Publish Date

June 2, 2024

Author

Dan Brockwell

So much effort in sales goes into prospecting for the right accounts, contacts, contact details & personalisation before calling them.

But all of that can go to waste when they don’t even answer the phone.

Connect rate is the % of call attempts that get answered, and it’s one of the most overlooked metrics when thinking about performance improvement.

If you can get a higher % of your calls answered, you give yourself more shots on goal to book meetings with no additional time spend!

Benchmarks vary depending on country, industry & persona, but here are a few to consider:

• Klenty’s 2024 data calls out an average of 10%
• Close.com calls 15% around the average
• Outreach’s SDR team expects an average connect rate of 6%

Across the Australian market, we generally see most connect rates from our graduates within the 10-20% range, typically higher than US connect rate data.

e.g. if they make 50 calls in a day, they’ll usually get 5-10 answers.

To get to the higher end of that range and beyond, we recommend 3 key buckets of tactics from coaching reps across different verticals and personae:

1. Optimise your calling times
2. Implement the right technical systems
3. Diversify your channels after calling

#1: Optimise your calling times ⏰

There’s a lot of conflicting data around the best and worst times for cold calling, and the truth is, geography, industry and persona all affect what this might look like for your team.

Here are some general trends to be aware of as a starting point for calling folks in office-based industries:

Days: Across most studies in the area, the mid-week tends to perform better than Mondays/Fridays. Mondays often packed with urgent work & meetings, Fridays people are closing out the week and often switch off early.

Some examples:

• A study of 100,000 call attempts from InsideSales.com, Thu was the highest performing day followed by Wednesday, with Mon & Tu the weakest days.
• Cognism’s similar study had Thu, Tu, Wed as the 3 best performing days, with Fri as the lowest-performing.

Time: From a Phoneburner study across 11 million cold calls, the 3 best windows for cold calling, averaging between 11-15% connect rate, are:

• 8-10am (prospect heading into work and starting the workday)
• 11-12pm (prospect finished with urgent morning tasks and more settled in)
• 4-5pm (prospect winding down the day, fewer meetings)

Considering your specific ICP, how should you think about call timing to maximise connect rate?

Test different days/times to work out the best typical calling times for your ICP & target persona

Different industries will have their peak/off-peak times, when prospects are less likely to be caught up in urgent work or meetings.

This is especially pertinent when you’re calling folks from multiple different industries, and we’ve even seen some reps split call blocks by the type of businesses they’re targeting.

Even within an industry, different personae may have different call times e.g. an executive may be harder to get during the day and be more likely to pick up calls just before/after work.

Before you settle on your regular call blocks, it’s healthy to test different days & times to track differences in connect rate.

Invest more time in calling on days with higher connect rate

You’ll likely do some calls on lower connect days still, but better to use weaker calling days & times to get through prospecting, written outreach, team meetings & sales ops. If people are often responding on Wednesdays and Thursdays, make the most of those days by extending your call blocks and thinning down other workblocks.

Adjust call times by lead timezone

If you’re calling leads across multiple timezones e.g. some in Sydney, some in Perth, you may want to segment your call blocks by location to ensure you’re calling leads in the sweet spot for connect rate.

Vary times for follow-up calls

If you’ve tried calling someone at a certain time of day and they haven’t picked up, you’re generally better off trying a different time of day for each subsequent call.

Only doing morning calls to someone who always has morning meetings isn’t going to be a recipe for success.

Though there are industry patterns, every individual’s schedule is different, so you’ll want try 2-3 different windows depending on your call blocks e.g. early morning, late morning, lunchtime, early afternoon, late afternoon.

Note: for a first call attempt, several reps have success even doing a second call same-day at a different time.

For inbounds or email replies, leap to call ASAP

Speed to lead is a key leading metric for connect rate when dealing with inbound leads. If someone enquires about the product online, you should respond to them ASAP while the pain/goal and your product are fresh in their head.

The same applies when someone responds to an initial outreach message async; rip out the mobile and get chatting while you have their finite attention.

#2: Implement the right technical systems⚙️

Use dialing software like a power dialer or autodialer

If you’re working with a large number of leads, you may want to consider using dialling software, rather than manually calling every prospect on your list one by one.

You may see terms like ‘power dialer’, ‘autodialer’ and ‘predictive dialer’ used.

The 5 tools we typically see B2B software sales teams using in Australia are Aircall, Dialpad, Orum, JustCall, and Ring Central.

These tools have a range of benefits, but specifically for connect rate, they can:

• Automatically dial the next phone number on your outreach list as soon as you hang up the last call, or a number is detected as busy or disconnected
• Send automatic voicemail drops post-call attempt to avoid reciting the same voicemail message again and again
• Optionally, call multiple numbers at once and connect you to the first one that answers

Use multiple lead databases

There are a lot of debates around the best place to find phone numbers, with tools like Lusha, ContactOut, Apollo, Firmable & ZoomInfo often being mentioned.

To maximise connect rate, we recommend using multiple solutions, as each database has its own gaps and errors.

For startups, picking two of Lusha/ContactOut/Apollo is a solid start. ZoomInfo is more expensive but has strong lead coverage, and may be worth considering as you scale.

Some tools are also better for certain sectors so look online to see what other teams are using for your ICP.

In doing so, you may find multiple numbers for one person, and best ensure you get the up-to-date number at their current workplace to call.

Verify whether still at company before calling

Even with multiple contact databases in use, you may be calling a contact who’s no longer with the company but that hasn’t shown up. Do a 30-second LinkedIn or website check where possible to ensure your target contact is still with the company.

Test whether your number is being picked up as spam

In some cases, there may be issues with the phone number you’re using where it gets marked as a potential spam call by the customer’s carrier or operating system.

This can sometimes happen when a phone is making an incredibly high volume of calls, calling the same numbers many times, or is manually reported as spam by a recipient.

Try checking this by calling several coworkers or non-work peers to confirm the number is still healthy.

#3: Diversify your channels after calling 💬

Try a second phone number

Using a second virtual number or a co-worker’s phone can also be a way to cut through after you’ve made several call attempts with your first number.

Here are two reasons why, beyond being marked as spam:

1. Sometimes, your number may be identified by a prospect as a ‘sales call’ based on your other comms, and they may be the type of person who has an initial aversion to being ‘sold to’. A fresh number not listed on your emails may be something they pick up out of curiosity.
2. This also allows you to make a higher volume of calls to the same prospect in a given window of time without the same perception of one person calling again and again.

Use brief voicemails or texts that don’t overshare

Imagine you got a missed call from a number you’ve never seen, with no followup as to what the call is. Easy to dismiss it as some spam call, so when selling, you’re generally more likely to get a ring back when you leave a brief message explaining who’s calling.

Two options here are voicemail and text. The advantage of voicemail is that it can come across more human & personal vs. mass-send texts, and it’s also the only option for landlines.

The advantage of text is it can be read whilst someone is in a meeting, you can sometimes get read receipts, and it makes it lower friction to respond.

Different industries and personae may have preferences around these; meet them where they are rather than force-fitting the approach you like.

A sample voicemail may look like: “Hey X, Dan from Earlywork here. Let me know when you have a minute to chat.”

Keeping it simple ensures that you don’t waste your time on unnecessary communication, and also avoids oversharing information about the call.

If you share too much about the nature of the call, people may have objections before they’ve even had the chance to speak to you and decide never to answer calls.

Multi-channel outreach acknowledging call attempts

When a call doesn’t go through, including a quick acknowledgement of the attempt in your next email or LinkedIn DM can help your prospect link the call to existing comms and be more likely to take a call. A caveat: this assumes you’re personalising and sharing relevant insights in your async comms

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Got any additional suggestions or questions about connect rate? Reach out to our co-founder Dan on Slack or email dan@earlywork.co.