How Effective Is Cold Calling? What One Study Measured

Cold calling works poorly as a first touch and better as a later step. The best-known independent study of it, run by Baylor University with real estate agents in 2011, logged one appointment or referral for every 209 calls (Baylor Keller Center). Since then, phones have started screening unknown numbers before they ring.

Check what a benchmark measured before you trust it. The study above measured real estate agents ringing consumers, and the screening data below is consumer data too. Many of the bigger B2B figures that circulate come from vendors measuring their own users, so I leave them out. The one vendor number I do use is labelled as one.

Where no measured B2B result exists, I give you my operating view and say so. A phone call is a good second or third step with someone who has already engaged. As the first touch to a cold list, the best-known independent study shows most dials never reach a person.

Where I stand: the outbound my team runs uses cold email and LinkedIn. We never do pure cold calling, and we have no dialing floor. When a client needs a phone step, we add warm calls as an optional extra, only for people who already replied, engaged or opted in.

What does "effective" mean for a cold call?

It depends on what you count, and most arguments about cold calling count different things. Three numbers get mixed up all the time:

• Answer rate: the share of dials a live person picks up.
• Conversation rate: the share of dials that turn into a real exchange with the right person, long enough to learn whether they have the problem you solve.
• Meeting rate: the share of dials that end with a booked meeting.

Each number sits inside the one before it. A team can report a healthy answer rate and still book almost nothing because gatekeepers, wrong numbers and "just send me an email" all count as answered.

For a founder, effectiveness means the third number, plus what those meetings close. When I judge a channel, I count meetings and the deals behind them, and I ignore dial counts and open rates.

The first number is the one that has fallen hardest. In a Pew Research Center survey of 10,211 US adults in July 2020, eight in ten said they generally do not answer a cellphone call from an unknown number (Pew Research Center).

That data is six years old and covers adults in general, not business buyers. Newer numbers point the same way. Hiya's 2026 State of the Call, from a call-analytics vendor, reports that 86% of calls from unknown numbers go unanswered.

I read it as the habit people bring to any unknown number, including on a work mobile. Raw dialing with no warmth behind it starts from a weak position before anyone says a word.

What does the best-known independent study actually show?

One widely repeated cold calling ratio comes from a 2011 Baylor study from the university's Keller Center, where real estate agents phoned consumers. That is a long way from B2B, which is why the details matter.

The authors themselves wrote that further research was needed.

Treat it as one rough data point from another industry. Your own first few hundred contacts are the real test.

What does the average cold caller really get?

Turn the table into a working day. Divide the appointments by the answered calls and you get roughly one appointment for every 93 people who actually picked up. About 99 in every 100 answered calls ended without an appointment, and most dials were never answered at all.

Now adjust for B2B. The agents rang consumer numbers, and a city has plenty of those to burn through. A B2B founder often has a limited number of target accounts, with switchboards, assistants and voicemail in front of the decision-maker. A list that small cannot absorb that waste. Every stranger who hangs up is an account you must approach again with a worse first impression.

For scale, one of our own email and LinkedIn campaigns contacted 2,187 people for 14 booked calls in 30 days, roughly one call per 156 people contacted. Those are contacts, not dials, so it is not a like-for-like comparison. Use the Baylor average as a sanity check:

• If your team's results land far below it, look at the list and the numbers before you touch the script.
• If they land far above it, check what your team is calling an "appointment".
• If you have no results yet, do not plan a quarter around a ratio real estate agents measured on consumers in 2011.

What separates a weak calling result from a strong one?

With no independent B2B study comparing average and top callers, this section is my operating view. In my email and LinkedIn campaigns, the gap between a weak result and a strong one usually starts with the list. I expect the phone to behave the same way: charm and voice only matter once the list is right.

A strong list starts from past wins. I build every list from the companies that already pay a client, then look for others that resemble them. Before you target anyone, review your closed deals and note the person who really signed off on each one. Search with the job titles your niche actually uses, and drop generic ones like Assistant, Manager and Associate.

A caller with that kind of list meets fewer people who hang up and more who can say yes. A caller handed a bought spreadsheet of switchboard numbers will look "average" however good they sound. A better script cannot fix a bad list, and I do not expect a better voice to.

Patience with small numbers matters just as much. A channel that fails at a small volume will not start working at a large one, so I fix the funnel first and scale after.

If you decide to phone anyway, cold calling techniques covers the call itself.

When does a phone call work?

The phone does one job well: turning interest that already exists into a meeting.

Nobody buys from a call or an email alone. They look you up first, and buyers say so themselves. A 2026 Gartner survey of 646 B2B buyers found 67% prefer a rep-free experience. An earlier Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers put the same preference at 61%.

So by the time a buyer agrees to talk to my team, most of the selling has already happened on their screen. They have usually looked at our client's LinkedIn profile and website before they say yes.

A call to that person is a different event from a call to a stranger. They know the name and why you are calling, so the call becomes the place where their questions get answered.

I run every campaign in the same order: a conversation first, then a sales call, then a client. The phone, when it appears at all, comes after the conversation.

The phone breaks down when it has to do everything at once. In one interrupted minute it has to earn trust and book a meeting, with a person who has never heard of you and did not plan to pick up.

How do unknown calls get screened now?

The phone itself now sits between you and the buyer. On an iPhone, the Phone app can screen unknown callers: "Ask Reason for Calling" screens the call before the phone rings, and "Silence" sends numbers that are not saved in contacts straight to voicemail (Apple Support).

The networks add their own layer in the US. The FCC requires voice providers to run STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication on the IP parts of their networks, and says it supports blocking decisions and call labeling (FCC). Its target is spoofed robocalls. For an honest seller, it means call labels now sit next to the buyer's own settings.

The iPhone setting is built around the contact list, so a buyer who replied to you but never saved your number may still send your call to voicemail, unless the number was in a recent outgoing call or a message the phone has picked up. Even with a warm prospect, I would rather they book the call in writing, or send a number and a time, than wait for a ring from a number they never saved.

Who should still use cold calling?

Find your row in this table before you hire anyone to dial.

If you sit in the first two rows, a phone step is worth testing. If you sit in the last three, more dialing will mostly spend your list.

Starting online does not cap the volume. One client of ours, a social media marketing agency in the UK, sold into 3 niches; we mixed LinkedIn messages, warm emails and cold email for them. Across 12 months that mix booked 714 meetings, all of them through LinkedIn and email.

Red flags that cold calling should not be your core motion:

• Your plan is "hire two SDRs and dial", with no answer to where the numbers come from.
• Most of your numbers reach a reception desk, not a person.
• Your buyer would find nothing convincing if they looked you up after hanging up.
• Your weekly report counts dials per rep.
• You need results from a market of a few hundred accounts and cannot afford to burn any of them.

If the phone is not for you, alternatives to cold calling lists what to do instead.

Where does a phone step fit in your sequence?

The rule is short. If the prospect has never seen you, do not open with the phone. If they have already answered you or asked to talk, a warm call can move things faster.

In our sequences, LinkedIn comes before the warm email, so the buyer already knows my client's name when it lands. Set the goal as 50-plus conversations started, instead of a booked-call target. That one change takes the pressure to pitch in the first message off the team. If you want the sequence itself in detail, see my follow-up framework for earning replies.

Here is a made-up example of the step that replaces a cold call. A supplier of site equipment follows up with a procurement lead at a civil engineering contractor who replied on LinkedIn.

Subject: Your note on approved suppliers

Hi Priya, thanks for answering my LinkedIn message about supplier reviews on your two new road projects. You mentioned the approved list gets reviewed in the first quarter, so the timing seems right to compare notes. I can walk you through how we work with contractors running similar civil works. Would 15 minutes on Thursday or Friday suit you? If a phone call is easier than Zoom, send me a number and a time and I will ring then.

The phone appears only at the end, as the buyer's choice. That is a warm call in its simplest form.

Run this checklist before you add a phone step to any sequence:

• Every person on the call list is named, with a number you have verified.
• Every one of them has replied, engaged or opted in.
• Whoever calls knows the full history of that account before dialing.
• Your profile, website and case studies hold up when the buyer checks you after the call.
• You will track meetings and deals, never dials.
• You have given the sequence enough time to judge it fairly.

A booked meeting is a step toward revenue and nothing more. For the head-to-head with email, read cold calling or cold email. For the LinkedIn first step, see how we run LinkedIn outreach. Whoever runs the meeting still has to close it.

My recommendation: treat the phone as an optional add-on for warm people, and build the foundation in email and LinkedIn. This week, pull your last 20 meetings and mark which ones started with a call to a stranger. That count tells you how much of your pipeline the phone is really carrying - and how much it is only COSTING you.

Debating whether to put a phone step in your outreach? Book a call and tell me who you sell to. I will say where I would use the phone and where I would not.