--- title: "Cold Calling Statistics 2026: 50+ Sourced Numbers" description: "Cold calling statistics for 2026: answer rates, calls per meeting, best time, call length and voicemail. 50+ numbers with primary source, year and sample." url: https://skipcall.io/en/blog/cold-calling-statistics language: en last_updated: 2026-11-11 --- [Ask Claude about this article](https://claude.ai/new?q=I'm%20reading%20%22Cold%20Calling%20Statistics%20for%202026%3A%2050%2B%20Numbers%2C%20Each%20Traced%20to%20Its%20Source%22%20\(https%3A%2F%2Fskipcall.io%2Fen%2Fblog%2Fcold-calling-statistics\).%20Read%20the%20article%2C%20then%20answer%20my%20questions%20about%20it.) [Ask ChatGPT about this article](https://chatgpt.com/?q=I'm%20reading%20%22Cold%20Calling%20Statistics%20for%202026%3A%2050%2B%20Numbers%2C%20Each%20Traced%20to%20Its%20Source%22%20\(https%3A%2F%2Fskipcall.io%2Fen%2Fblog%2Fcold-calling-statistics\).%20Read%20the%20article%2C%20then%20answer%20my%20questions%20about%20it.) LinkedIn X [Back to blog](https://skipcall.io/en/blog) Cold calling Published 11 November 2026 # Cold Calling Statistics for 2026: 50+ Numbers, Each Traced to Its Source Cold calling statistics for 2026, sorted by the question you are trying to answer: answer rates, calls per meeting, best time, call length, voicemail, mobile versus landline, multi-line dialing and buyer attitudes. Every number carries its primary source, its year and its sample, and we opened each source on November 11, 2026. The popular figures we could not trace are listed separately. 5.4% of dials answered for the average rep, 13.3% for the top quartile (Gong Labs, 300M+ calls, July 2024) 2.7% average cold call success rate on 2025 data, up from 2.3% (Cognism with WHAM, 2026 report, 200K+ calls) 86% of unknown calls go unanswered, according to consumers surveyed in six countries (Hiya, State of the Call 2026) The most reliable cold calling statistics for 2026 say three things. The average rep gets 5.4% of dials answered and the top quartile 13.3% (Gong Labs, 300M+ calls, 2024). The average success rate is 2.7% on 2025 data (Cognism with WHAM, 200K+ calls). And 86% of unknown calls go unanswered according to consumers (Hiya, 2026). Every number on this page carries its primary source, its year and its sample, and we opened each source on November 11, 2026. Most cold calling statistics pages copy each other. The same thirty figures circulate without a link to a study, sometimes with the meaning changed along the way. This page works the other way round: fewer numbers, each one traceable, sorted by the question you are actually asking. A You are setting targets for an SDR team and need a baseline that is not invented. B You are writing a deck, a post or a business case and want a figure you can cite with its source. C You want to know whether your own numbers are normal, and how to measure them properly. ## What are the key cold calling statistics for 2026? Here are the six figures that answer most questions, before the detail. Each one is developed, with its limits, in the section that follows. 5.4% of dials answered for the average rep, 13.3% for the top quartile (Gong Labs, 2024) 2.7% average success rate on 2025 data (Cognism with WHAM, 2026 report) 82 s average cold call length on 2025 data (Cognism with WHAM) 4.1 quality conversations per SDR per day (The Bridge Group, 2025) 69% of B2B buyers have accepted a call from a provider they had not worked with (RAIN Group, 2018) 86% of unknown calls go unanswered, consumer survey (Hiya, 2026) The sources behind this page fall into four families, and they do not carry the same weight. **Call data from software vendors.** Gong Labs, Cognism with WHAM, JobPhoning. Large samples, measured behavior, but a customer base that is not the whole market and a publisher that sells calling tools or data. **Surveys of companies and buyers.** The Bridge Group, RAIN Group, Hiya. They report what people say they do. Useful for attitudes and for activity levels, weaker for precise rates. **Academic or one-off studies.** Baylor University’s Keller Center (2012), the InsideSales.com and MIT study (2007). Clear methods, but old, and often about a different kind of call than B2B cold calling. **Our own sample.** 86,168 outbound calls placed with Skipcall over 12 months by one B2B team, fully anonymized. One team and one market: a benchmark, never an industry average. ## How do you read a cold calling statistic? A cold calling statistic can be read correctly in five checks. They take one minute and they explain most of the contradictions between two pages that quote “the” success rate. 1. 01 #### Find the denominator: A rate is a division. “Connect rate” can be answered calls divided by dials (Gong Labs’ definition), conversations divided by dials, or connects divided by contacts. The same team can report 5%, 11% or 18% depending on the choice. 2. 02 #### Find the definition of success: A meeting booked, a meeting held, a qualified lead and a conversation over 30 seconds are four different successes. Gong’s 2018 analysis counted meetings actually held; Cognism’s 2024 report counted meetings booked out of conversations. 3. 03 #### Look at who was measured: Customers of one vendor, one team, one country, consumers or businesses. Real estate agents calling private homes in 2011 and SDRs calling CFOs in 2025 do not produce comparable numbers. 4. 04 #### Separate the data year from the publication year: A “2026 report” usually analyses 2025 calls. A blog post updated last month can still quote a 2007 study. Phone screening has changed too much to mix eras. 5. 05 #### Ask who publishes it: Dialer and data vendors have an interest in showing that calling works; advisors on digital buying have the opposite interest. That does not make a number false, but it tells you which way it may lean. ## What percentage of cold calls get answered? Between roughly 5% and 18% of dials, depending on the list, the number type and the definition. Three sources measure it directly, and one survey explains why it is falling. **Gong Labs, 300M+ calls.** In its analysis published on July 18, 2024, Gong Labs defines connect rate as the calls answered by a prospect divided by the dials made by a rep. The result is 5.4% for the average rep and 13.3% for the top quartile. In dials, that is 19 cold calls for one conversation on average, and 8 for a top-quartile rep. Source: [Gong Labs, “The hidden power of cold calling”](https://www.gong.io/resources/labs/the-hidden-power-of-cold-calling-insights-from-300m-calls/). **Cognism with WHAM, 2024 report.** Out of 55,701 dials, 9,247 were connected and 5,265 became conversations. The report does not print a percentage; the division gives about 16.6% connected and 9.5% in conversation, on a base of direct dials supplied by a data vendor. Source: [Cognism, The State of Cold Calling](https://www.cognism.com/state-of-cold-calling). **A Skipcall sample, one B2B team.** In a fully anonymized sample of 86,168 outbound calls placed with Skipcall over 12 months (November 2025 to November 2026) by a B2B prospecting team calling mostly French companies, 17.9% of calls were picked up and 11% became a conversation longer than 30 seconds. That is 5.6 dials per pickup and 9.1 dials per conversation. The rest is mostly voicemail. What happens to 100 outbound calls Fully anonymized Skipcall sample: 86,168 calls, one B2B team, mostly French lists. Voicemail 70.8% Picked up, conversation over 30 s 11.0% No answer or busy 7.3% Picked up, 30 s or less 6.8% Technical failure 2.8% Number in error 0.8% Other 0.4% Source: Skipcall internal sample, November 2025 to November 2026. Excludes lines dropped automatically when another line picks up. One team, one market: a benchmark, not an industry average. **Hiya, consumer survey.** Hiya’s State of the Call 2026, based on more than 12,000 consumers in six countries, leads with one figure: 86% of unknown calls go unanswered. The 2024 edition of the same report gave 46% of unidentified calls unanswered. Hiya’s page does not explain the difference, so do not read the two as a trend line; read them as the same message, that an unrecognized number starts with a handicap. Sources: [Hiya, State of the Call](https://www.hiya.com/state-of-the-call) and [Hiya’s 2024 press release](https://www.hiya.com/press-releases/phone-fraud-and-spam-reached-all-time-high-costing-scammed-consumers-nearly-2-300-on-average-in-2023). How to move the rate, lever by lever, is the subject of our [cold call connect rate benchmarks](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/cold-call-connect-rate-benchmarks). The technical causes of a low rate are in [why prospects don’t answer cold calls](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/why-prospects-dont-answer-cold-calls), and the effect of phone-side filtering in [cold calling and iPhone call screening](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/cold-calling-iphone-call-screening). ## How many cold calls does it take to book a meeting? About 413 dials for the average rep and about 48 for a top-quartile rep, according to Gong Labs’ two published ratios. The spread between reps is the most important number on this page. Gong Labs reports that 4.6% of conversations turn into a meeting for the average rep, against 16.7% for the top quartile. Combined with dials per conversation, the funnel looks like this. Average rep vs. top-quartile rep Four measures from the same study. Each panel has its own scale. __Average rep __Top quartile Dials answeredshare of dials Average rep 5.4% Top quartile 13.3% Dials per conversationlower is better Average rep 19 Top quartile 8 Conversations bookedshare of conversations Average rep 4.6% Top quartile 16.7% Meetings per monthon 800 dials Average rep 2 Top quartile 18 Source: Gong Labs, "The hidden power of cold calling", 300M+ calls, published July 18, 2024, read November 11, 2026. Meetings per month: Gong's assumption of 800 dials a month. Two other sources frame the same question differently. - **Cognism with WHAM** reports an average success rate of 2.7% on 2025 data, up from 2.3% the year before. The 2024 report defined the rate as meetings booked out of conversations (4.82%, or 254 meetings from 5,265 conversations). Source: [Cognism’s 2026 cold calling report](https://www.cognism.com/reports/cold-calling-report-2026). - **Attempts needed to reach someone:** the same 2026 report gives 1.55 attempts on average to reach a prospect on 2025 data, against 2.9 the year before. The 2024 report called 3 the optimal number of attempts. > The gap between two reps on the same dial volume is larger than any gap between two years. These are broad averages. On a verified list in a good window, the count drops sharply, which is what we work through in [how many cold calls to book a meeting](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/how-many-cold-calls-to-book-a-meeting). To turn your own rates into a number of attempts per contact, use the [call attempts calculator](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/call-attempts-calculator). ## How many cold calls do SDRs make per day? A median of 44 phone activities per day, inside 112 total daily activities, according to The Bridge Group’s 2025 SDR report. The figure comes from a survey of 351 B2B companies run in 2024 and 2025 and published on February 6, 2025. 112 median total daily activities per SDR: 44 phone, 41 email, 19 LinkedIn, 8 text or other 4.1 quality conversations per day, described by the report as the first rebound in the study's history 56 dials per day for phone-centric teams, with 4.6 quality conversations, against 28 dials and 3.4 for email-centric teams Two cautions. This is survey data: leaders report what their teams do, the calls are not counted by a system. And the report page does not define a quality conversation, so compare it with your own definition before you set a target. Source: [The Bridge Group, 2025 SDR Models and Metrics report](https://www.bridgegroupinc.com/research/2025-sdr-models-metrics-report-the-bridge-group). The most useful reading is the comparison inside the report: teams that lean on the phone make twice the dials and hold about a third more quality conversations per day than teams that lean on email. How to set a daily number for your own team is covered in [how many cold calls per day](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/how-many-cold-calls-per-day). ## What is the best time and day to cold call? The studies disagree, and that is the honest answer. Each one measures a different population, in a different country, with a different definition of a good call. **Thursday, 10 to 11 AM.** Cognism with WHAM, 2026 report on 2025 calls: 10 to 11 AM is the best hour, 2 to 3 PM a solid second window, Thursday the best day, and Tuesday has overtaken Wednesday for second place. [Source](https://www.cognism.com/reports/cold-calling-report-2026). **Tuesday, 9 to 10 AM.** JobPhoning barometer, 11.7 million French B2B calls from July 2025 to June 2026: best slot Tuesday 9 to 10 AM (index 113, base 100). Best month to reach people: September (index 112). [Source](https://jobphoning.com/barometre-teleprospection-b2b). **10 AM to 2 PM.** Baylor University’s Keller Center, 6,264 calls by 50 real estate agents in November 2011: mornings to early afternoon were the most effective. Calls to private homes, not to businesses. [Source](https://kellercenter.hankamer.baylor.edu/news/story/2012/has-cold-calling-gone-cold). **4 to 6 PM, Wednesday and Thursday.** InsideSales.com and MIT, 2007: more than 15,000 leads and 100,000 call attempts across six companies. But the study is about calling back web-generated leads, not cold calls. [Copy of the study](https://www.mortech.com/hs-fs/hub/25649/file-13535879-pdf/docs/mit_study.pdf). That last study is the origin of most “call at 4 PM” advice, and it is routinely misquoted. Its authors wrote that 4 to 6 PM is the best time to make contact with a lead, 114% better than 11 AM to noon, and that 8 to 9 AM is 164% better than 1 to 2 PM for qualifying. They also found Thursday 49.7% better than the worst day for making contact. All of it concerns people who had just filled in a web form, in data collected before 2007. The hour-by-hour detail, by industry and by time zone, is in [best time to cold call in B2B](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/best-time-to-cold-call-b2b), and the day question in [best day to cold call](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/best-day-to-cold-call-b2b). ## How long does a cold call last? 82 seconds on average on 2025 data, down from 93 seconds the year before, according to the Cognism and WHAM 2026 report. The same page notes that Cognism’s own SDRs average two minutes. What happens inside the call is better documented by Gong’s analysis of cold calls, published on August 16, 2021 (“thousands of cold calls”, no exact count given). ≈ 2× successful cold calls are nearly twice as long as unsuccessful ones 55% share of the time the rep talks on successful cold calls 53 s longest rep monologue on successful calls, against 25 seconds on unsuccessful ones 6.6× higher success for calls that open with "How have you been?" than for calls without it 2.1× higher success rate when the rep states the reason for the call −40% less likely to book a meeting after "Did I catch you at a bad time?" Source: [Gong, “8 data-driven cold call techniques”](https://www.gong.io/blog/cold-call-stats). Read these as correlations in one vendor’s recordings: the opener figures are five years old and the sample is not stated, so they are a reason to test an opener, not a guarantee. Duration by outcome is developed in [how long should a cold call last](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/how-long-should-a-cold-call-last), the split between talking and listening in [talk-to-listen ratio](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/talk-to-listen-ratio), and the openers themselves in [cold call openers](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/cold-call-openers). To rehearse one before testing it on real prospects, use these [cold call role play scenarios](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/cold-call-role-play-scenarios). ## Should you leave a voicemail on a cold call? One or two, yes, mainly because of what they do to your emails. That is the finding of Gong Labs’ second 2024 analysis, published on August 8, 2024 on the same 300M+ call base. 5.87% email reply rate when voicemails are left, against 2.73% without 2.2% email reply rate after three or more voicemails, lower than leaving none 5.17% connect rate on later dials after voicemails, against 7.18% without, a 28% reduction The two effects pull in opposite directions: a voicemail roughly doubles the chance of an email reply, and lowers the chance that the next call is answered. Gong also notes that skipping the voicemail lets a rep make 25% more calls in the same time. Source: [Gong Labs, “Should you leave voicemails when cold calling?”](https://www.gong.io/resources/labs/should-you-leave-voicemails-when-cold-calling-heres-what-the-data-says/). The scale of the question shows in our own sample: 70.8% of the 86,168 calls ended on voicemail. What you do with that minute decides a large part of the day. The practical choice, attempt by attempt, is in [should you leave a cold call voicemail](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/cold-call-voicemail). On the email side, the first Gong Labs study adds one more number worth keeping: reps who call get a 3.44% email reply rate against 1.81% for those who do not, even when the call is not answered. Calls and emails are not competitors, which we develop in [cold call vs cold email](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/cold-call-vs-cold-email). When to switch from one channel to the other is covered in our [multichannel prospecting guide](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/multichannel-prospecting). ## Do mobile numbers get answered more often than landlines? Yes in the one dataset we can vouch for, with a gap of about five points. We found no large published study that separates answer rates by number type with a stated method, so this section rests on the Skipcall sample alone. 18.7% pickup rate on a list of mobiles (4,901 calls, 5.3 dials per pickup) 13.9% pickup rate on business locations with no contact name, mostly switchboards (3,014 calls, about 7.2 dials per pickup) 2× leads per 100 calls on lists launched after a signal (1.2) against regular lists (0.6) Two readings matter more than the percentages. On a switchboard, a pickup is not a conversation with the right person: reception or a phone menu answers and the transfer is still to obtain. And the lists launched after a signal, such as a content download or a webinar, were picked up 15.3% of the time against 13.3% for regular lists, by the same team. The full comparison by number type is in [direct dial vs mobile vs switchboard](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/direct-dial-vs-mobile-vs-switchboard), and the effect of timing on signal lists in [buying signals and the call list](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/buying-signals-call-list). ## Does multi-line dialing change the numbers? It changes conversations per hour, not the answer rate, and the gain flattens quickly. There is no independent study of this that we could verify, so what follows is a model with its assumptions shown, not a measurement. With a [parallel dialer](https://skipcall.io/en/parallel-dialer), several numbers ring at once for one rep and the first person who picks up gets the conversation; the other lines are cancelled while they ring. At a 10% human answer rate, our model gives these results. 0.16 reachable prospects lost per conversation on 4 lines 0.54 reachable prospects lost per conversation on 10 lines +18% more conversations per hour from 4 to 10 lines, for 56% more contacts used The rule that comes out of it is simple: lines multiplied by answer rate should stay at or under 0.4, which means 4 lines at 10%, 3 lines at 15% and 2 lines at 20%. The formula, the tables and every assumption are in [how many lines a parallel dialer should run](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/how-many-lines-parallel-dialer). When a vendor quotes “3 times more conversations”, ask for the answer rate, the number of lines and the list type behind the figure. Without them it cannot be compared with anything. Line counts and published prices, tool by tool, are in our [comparison of multi-line dialers](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/best-parallel-dialers). ## Do buyers still accept cold calls? Many do, and they are less patient with irrelevant ones. The most detailed buyer data is RAIN Group’s _Top Performance in Sales Prospecting_, a 2018 study of 488 B2B buyers responsible for $4.2 billion in purchases and 489 sellers. 82% of buyers accept meetings at least sometimes with sellers who reach out 69% have accepted a phone call from a provider they had not worked with 57% of C-level and VP buyers prefer the phone, against 51% of directors and 47% of managers 56% give a new provider 5 to 10 minutes on the phone to prove it can be valuable 71% of buyers who accept meetings want to hear from sellers early, when they are looking for ideas 8 touchpoints on average to get an initial meeting, 5 for top performers (seller survey) Sources: [RAIN Group, Top Performance in Sales Prospecting (PDF)](https://www.rainsalestraining.com/hubfs/PDFs/Top%20Performance%20in%20Sales%20Prospecting.pdf) and [RAIN Group on touchpoints](https://www.rainsalestraining.com/blog/how-many-touchpoints-does-it-take-to-make-a-sale). The study is eight years old. It remains the reference because nothing as detailed has replaced it, but smartphone screening has changed a lot since. Set next to Hiya’s 86%, the picture is consistent: buyers take calls that bring them something and ignore numbers they do not recognize. Whether that still makes the phone worth it is the argument of [is cold calling dead](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/is-cold-calling-dead). ## Which popular cold calling statistics could we not verify? Eight figures that appear on most statistics pages either have no traceable study, or come from a study that says something else. We searched for each one on November 11, 2026. **“80% of sales require five follow-up calls” and “44% of reps give up after one.”** We found no published study with a method and a sample, only articles quoting each other. Do not build a cadence on it. **“It takes 8 call attempts to reach a prospect.”** The closest primary source is RAIN Group’s 8 touchpoints, across all channels, reported by sellers. Cognism’s 2026 report measures 1.55 call attempts on 2025 data. **“Calling at 4 to 5 PM is 71% (or 164%) more effective.”** The 2007 InsideSales.com and MIT study is about web leads. Its 164% compares 8 to 9 AM with 1 to 2 PM for qualifying, and we did not find 71% in it. **“92% of customer interactions happen over the phone.”** Usually credited to Salesforce. We found no Salesforce report containing it, only secondhand citations. **“The average cold calling success rate is 6.7%.”** In Cognism’s reports, 6.7% and later 11.3% are the rates of Cognism’s own sales team. The industry averages on the same pages are 2.3% and 2.7%. **“Cold calling only works 0.3% of the time.”** This comes from the Baylor study: 19 appointments from 6,264 calls by real estate agents to a random list of homes in 2011, with 28% of calls answered. It is not a B2B figure. **“90% of cold calls fail in the first 30 seconds.”** In Cognism’s 2024 report, this is a practitioner’s observation (“where I see 90% of calls go downhill”), not a measurement. **“Direct dials make you 46% more likely to connect.”** Attributed to Cognism’s State of Cold Calling. The figure does not appear on the report page we read. None of this means the underlying idea is wrong. Following up matters, late afternoon can work, direct dials do connect better in our own sample. It means the number attached to the idea cannot be defended in front of a skeptical CFO. ## Which cold calling statistics can you quote, with the source? Ten figures you can copy as they are. Each card gives the number, what it measures, the source and the date, and the button copies the sentence with its source. 1. 5.4% 5.4% of dials are answered for the average rep and 13.3% for the top quartile. Gong Labs, 300M+ calls, July 18, 2024 2. 19 It takes 19 dials for one conversation on average and 8 for a top-quartile rep. Gong Labs, July 18, 2024 3. 4.6% 4.6% of conversations become a meeting for the average rep, 16.7% for the top quartile. Gong Labs, July 18, 2024 4. 3.44% Reps who call get a 3.44% email reply rate, against 1.81% for those who do not. Gong Labs, July 18, 2024 5. 5.87% Leaving voicemails raises the email reply rate from 2.73% to 5.87%, and three or more lower it to 2.2%. Gong Labs, August 8, 2024 6. 2.7% The average cold call success rate is 2.7% on 2025 data, up from 2.3% a year earlier. Cognism with WHAM, 2026 report, 200K+ calls 7. 82 s The average cold call lasts 82 seconds on 2025 data, down from 93 seconds a year earlier. Cognism with WHAM, 2026 report 8. 44 SDRs log a median of 44 phone activities and 4.1 quality conversations a day. The Bridge Group, 351 B2B companies, February 6, 2025 9. 69% 69% of B2B buyers have accepted a call from a provider they had not worked with. RAIN Group, 488 buyers, 2018 10. 17.9% In a fully anonymized sample of 86,168 outbound calls by one B2B team, 17.9% of calls were picked up and 70.8% reached voicemail. Skipcall, November 2025 to November 2026 When you quote one, keep the parenthesis. A figure without its sample and its date is how the unverifiable numbers above were born. ## How do you build your own cold calling benchmark? In 30 days and with five numbers. Published statistics tell you the order of magnitude; only your own data tells you what to change. 1. 01 #### Week 1, fix the definitions: Write down what counts as a dial, a pickup, a conversation (for example, more than 30 seconds with the right person) and a meeting (booked or held). Use the same words in the CRM, the dialer and the weekly review. 2. 02 #### Week 1, tag every list: Number type (mobile, direct dial, switchboard), source of the data and, if there is one, the signal that put the contact on the list. Without the tag, you can only compute one average, and averages hide everything. 3. 03 #### Weeks 2 and 3, call in two windows: Same kind of list, two time slots, at least a few hundred dials in each. Log outcomes with the same dispositions for everyone. 4. 04 #### Week 4, compute five numbers: Pickup rate, conversation rate, dials per conversation, conversation-to-meeting rate and dials per meeting, each one per list type and per window. 5. 05 #### Week 4, compare and choose one lever: Put your numbers next to the published ranges. If dials per conversation is the weak point, work on the list and the window. If conversation-to-meeting is the weak point, work on the opening and the reason for the call. Three free tools do the arithmetic: the [sales funnel calculator](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/sales-funnel-calculator) for the ratios, the [call attempts calculator](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/call-attempts-calculator) for the number of tries per contact, and the [cost per meeting calculator](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/cost-per-meeting) to turn the result into money. Which indicators deserve a place on the weekly dashboard is covered in [call metrics and KPIs](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/call-metrics-kpis). One practical point about tooling. A calling tool logs every outcome the same way for every rep, which is what makes these five numbers possible. Skipcall records the outcome, duration and recording of each call and writes them back to HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce or Attio; it does not supply the contact lists, so list quality stays your job. ## What to remember - **Answer rate:** 5.4% of dials for the average rep, 13.3% for the top quartile (Gong Labs, 2024). On cleaner lists the two datasets we read sit near 17%: 16.6% connected in Cognism’s 2024 report and 17.9% picked up in the Skipcall sample. - **Calls per meeting:** about 413 dials on average and about 48 for the top quartile, by Gong’s ratios. The spread between reps is wider than any change between years. - **Success rate:** 2.7% on 2025 data (Cognism with WHAM), a number that only means something with its definition. - **Timing:** Thursday 10 to 11 AM in one study, Tuesday 9 to 10 AM in another. Test two windows on your own list. - **Voicemail:** one or two help your emails, three or more hurt, and they lower later answer rates (Gong Labs, 2024). - **Buyers:** 69% have accepted a call from an unknown provider (RAIN Group, 2018), and 86% of unknown calls go unanswered according to consumers (Hiya, 2026). Being recognized and being relevant decide the outcome. - **Method:** check the denominator, the definition, the sample, the data year and the publisher before you repeat a number. If a figure on this page is out of date or if you hold a primary source for one of the numbers we could not trace, tell us and we will update the page with the date of the change. Author [Charles Baldet](https://skipcall.io/en/author/charles-baldet) [Charles Baldet on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesbaldet/) CEO & Co-Founder, Skipcall Charles is the CEO and co-founder of Skipcall. A sales commando with over 10 years of experience in B2B SaaS and complex strategic accounts, he has closed major deals with Stellantis, SNCF, RATP and Natixis. A specialist in the PUCCKA and MEDDIC methodologies, Charles regularly teaches sales at HEC's incubator and the Sorbonne. He was ranked among Les Echos' top 10 business angels under 35 in 2020. He also co-founded Getalead (B2B sales agency) and Getlab (SalesTech studio). [See all their articles](https://skipcall.io/en/author/charles-baldet) FAQ ## Frequently asked questions **What are the most reliable cold calling statistics for 2026?** The most reliable ones come from studies that publish a sample and a definition. Gong Labs (300M+ calls, July 2024) measures 5.4% of dials answered for the average rep and 13.3% for the top quartile. Cognism with WHAM (200K+ calls, 2025 data) reports a 2.7% average success rate, an 82-second average call and Thursday 10 to 11 AM as the best slot. The Bridge Group (351 B2B companies, published February 2025) reports a median of 44 phone activities and 4.1 quality conversations per SDR per day. All three were read on November 11, 2026. **What is the success rate of cold calling?** It depends entirely on the definition. Cognism with WHAM reports 2.7% on 2025 data and 2.3% the year before, without restating the definition on the 2026 report page. Its 2024 report gave 4.82% and defined it as meetings booked divided by conversations (254 meetings out of 5,265 conversations). Gong Labs measures something else: 4.6% of conversations turn into a meeting for the average rep and 16.7% for the top quartile. Never compare two success rates without checking what is divided by what. **What percentage of cold calls are answered?** Between about 5% and 18% in the published data, depending on the list and the definition. Gong Labs measures 5.4% of dials answered for the average rep and 13.3% for the top quartile across 300M+ calls. In a fully anonymized Skipcall sample of 86,168 outbound calls by one B2B team, 17.9% of calls were picked up and 11% became a conversation longer than 30 seconds. The gap comes from list quality, number type and calling window. **How many cold calls does it take to book a meeting?** About 413 dials for the average rep and about 48 for a top-quartile rep, if you combine Gong Labs' two published ratios: 19 dials per conversation and 4.6% of conversations booked on average, 8 dials and 16.7% for the top quartile. Gong itself illustrates it with 800 dials a month: 2 meetings for the average rep, 18 for the top quartile. On a verified list, the count is far lower, which is why you should measure your own ratio. **What is the best time to make cold calls?** The published studies do not agree, which is itself the finding. Cognism with WHAM (2025 data) names 10 to 11 AM, with 2 to 3 PM as a solid second window, and Thursday as the best day. The JobPhoning barometer, on 11.7 million French B2B calls from July 2025 to June 2026, puts the best slot on Tuesday from 9 to 10 AM. The often-quoted late afternoon figures come from a 2007 study of web leads, not cold calls. Test two windows on your own list. **How long does the average cold call last?** 82 seconds on 2025 data, down from 93 seconds the year before, according to the Cognism and WHAM 2026 report. Gong's 2021 analysis found that successful cold calls are nearly twice as long as unsuccessful ones, and that reps talk 55% of the time on successful calls. A short average says little: it mixes calls that end in ten seconds with conversations that book a meeting. **Is it true that 80% of sales require five follow-up calls?** We could not find a published study behind it. On November 11, 2026, our search for the origin of the claim, and of its companion that 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up, returned only articles quoting each other, with no method and no sample. The closest sourced figure is different: RAIN Group reports that it takes an average of 8 touchpoints, across all channels, to get an initial meeting with a new prospect, and 5 for top performers, based on a survey of 489 sellers. **Do buyers still answer cold calls in 2026?** Some do, and fewer than before from numbers they do not recognize. In RAIN Group's 2018 study of 488 B2B buyers, 82% accept meetings at least sometimes with sellers who reach out and 69% have accepted a phone call from a provider they had not worked with. On the consumer side, Hiya's State of the Call 2026, a survey of more than 12,000 consumers in six countries, reports that 86% of unknown calls go unanswered. A recognizable number and a relevant reason to call matter more every year. ## A calendar full of meetings starts with a call. [Get started now](https://app.skipcall.io/signup) [Book a demo](https://skipcall.io/en/demo) **No commitment** · Number live in 2 minutes Keep reading ## Related articles [View all articles](https://skipcall.io/en/blog) 01 cold calling ### [Is cold calling dead? What the 2024 to 2026 data actually says](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/is-cold-calling-dead) Cold calling isn't dead, but it no longer forgives sloppy work. Connect rates, the share of conversations that turn into meetings, how many buyers still take a call: the numbers published by Gong, Cognism, RAIN Group and Gartner, with their date, their sample and what they really measure. 5 Nov 2026 02 Connect rate ### [Cold Call Connect Rate Benchmarks 2026: 60+ US B2B Stats and 5 Levers](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/cold-call-connect-rate-benchmarks) Average cold call connect rate is 8-12% in B2B. Real benchmarks by industry and the 5 levers to reach 25%+. Get the Cold Calling Benchmarks (free). 12 May 2026 03 SDR metrics ### [How Many Cold Calls to Book a Meeting? 33-50 Dials on Average (Cut to 12-15)](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/how-many-cold-calls-to-book-a-meeting) How many cold calls to book a meeting? Real benchmarks, the average-vs-top-SDR math and the levers to cut your number. Get the Cold Calling Benchmarks (free). 8 Apr 2026 ## Ready to multiply your productivity? Join the sales teams that have transformed their prospecting. [Request a demo](https://skipcall.io/en/demo) Personalized demo • No commitment