How to Book More Meetings in Fewer Cold Calls (Cold Call Metrics)

I’ve coached over 100 SDRs in my career and found that the #1 rep is never #1 on the activity board.

Why? Because they put in the work off the phones to drastically increase their results on the phones.

• They have double the conversations by calling the prospects most likely to pick up
• They book double the meetings by targeting the prospects most likely to buy
• They keep all the meetings by making sure those prospects actually show up

Don’t get me wrong, they still dial A LOT and are really good on the phones. But they can accomplish in 200 dials what most accomplish in 400 because they avoid:

• Dialing bad lines
• Calling bad fit companies
• Catching the wrong contact
• Hitting up recent Closed Losts or current customers – Whoops!

The Golden 3 Conversion Metrics dictate the number of meetings you keep when you make 100 cold calls:

1. Connect Rate. What % of your prospects picked up the phone?
2. Set Rate. What % of those conversations turned into meetings?
3. Show Rates. What % of those meetings actually show up?

Using Gong we pulled call data from an average seller and a top-tier seller that made the same number of cold calls. Here are the results:

Same number of dials, 13x the results. Massive difference.  

If you feel seen as that average rep, you’re already ahead of the game by reading this noozy. If you can pull even one of these levers, it’ll make an insane difference in your call outcomes

.Let’s start with the one that determines how many conversations you get yourself into.

1: How to Maximize Your Connect Rate

It’s pretty demoralizing to call 40 people, have 0 conversations, and leave voicemails for an hour straight. Not effective, not fun, and very lonely.

To maximize your connect rate, there are four places to focus. Let’s break ‘em down one by one.  

1) Prioritize mobile and direct lines whenever possible to skip gatekeepers and phone trees. For every one prospect who chews you out, you’ll have twenty others who only answered because you called their cell.
2) Mark your tracks as you dial so that your first long phone tree or screeching fax machine is your last. Mark the quality of each number as red, yellow, or green so you remember which ones are good or bad, and make notes on the quickest routes to navigate things like phone trees and corporate lines.

3) Abide by the law of diminishing returns. Draw your cut off line ahead of time so you know when it’s time to move on to the next prospect. Some general rules are 5 dials in 4 weeks, stopping after two voicemails, and avoiding impassable gatekeepers.

4) Prevent yourself from getting spam-tagged. I know I’m not picking up a call that’s marked as spam, so your prospects probably aren’t either. Here are some things you can do to prevent this:

• Register your phone number. Wireless carriers reference call registries to determine your phone number’s reputation. You can register as a non-spam caller here: https://freecallerregistry.com/fcr/
• Rotate your phone numbers. Wireless carriers monitor unusual spikes in call volumes, so many sales engagement platforms let you buy and rotate additional lines so you don’t tarnish your numbers.
• Test your number regularly. Call your personal line to make sure the numbers you’re using are clean
• Call during business hours. The FTC considers business hours between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., so an 8am or 5pm block is fine to pass the gatekeeper.
• Don’t repeatedly call bad numbers. Carriers will flag you, so just another reason to mark your tracks.

2: Maximize Your Meeting Set Rate

The #1 way to increase your set rate: Call people who actually have the problem that you solve!

In order of priority, the prospects who are most likely to book meetings are the ones who…

1. Have a problem now
2. Have a problem
3. Anyone else in your ideal customer profile

The higher they are on the list, the more you should call them.  

Start with a big list, cut all the junk out of it, then prioritize. Let’s walk through how you do it.

Step 1: Pull a list of qualified potential customers

Disqualify the bad fits based on geography, size, industry, or any other filters you use to determine your ideal customer. Use the 30-second rule to disqualify these accounts so that you can spend time on accounts that’ll actually buy

Step 2: Tier your Accounts A/B/C

Build a list of the top 5 things that make a company likely to buy, prioritizing the timing based signals at the top. Build your own list based on your solution, but here’s an example of my top 5 research triggers at Pave:

• Have an upcoming compensation review (Problem now!)
• Fundraised within the last 3 months (Problem now!)
• Hiring a compensation person (Problem now!)
• Growing over 10% per year (Problem)
• References “generous equity compensation” in job openings (Problem)

From there, I tier the accounts as A Tier (Problem now!), B Tier (Problem), and C Tier (Anyone else in my ICP).  

And add two extra dials to those A and B tier accounts, as they’re far more likely to convert.

Step 3: Call the right people on the Accounts

Don’t waste an A tier account by working only your decision maker. Work the entire account, for example:

• All “above the line” execs - VP, SVP, C-Level
• All “at the line” department leads/champions - Director level
• Some “below the line” business users - Manager level

Be bold by calling high into your accounts. Often times the best way to get an old-school exec is through a good old cold call since their inbox is well-guarded by an EA.

Conversely, don’t go too low on the food chain. A lowly HR analyst might take a meeting, but they rarely have any influence on a purchase.

Step 4: Prioritize your dials

While you want to stack your A and B tiers with more dials, there are a few intent signals (via your tech stack) that are worth calling first:

• Someone that opens your prospecting email 5x
• Someone that visits your pricing page
• Someone that replies over email with an objection
• Someone that has a new compelling event (i.e., raised a round)

From there, call the rest of your list top to bottom.

To hammer this home, I had one rep who booked 3 meetings on less than 50 cold calls per week. He was just so damn good at scavenging for hidden gold in the CRM.

You don’t have to be special on the phones or make 400 dials per week to have success when you’re calling people who actually have the problem you solve.

Now ya just gotta get them to show up.

3: How to Maximize Your Show Rate

If you show your prospect that you've been preparing for the upcoming call, they'll feel a sense of goodwill and be far less likely to no-show you.

You do that by sending a day-before confirmation email:

If you booked the meeting further out, send this email a week prior instead of a day prior, then bubble it up the day before the meeting (no need to include more research in the 2nd email).

What if they actually no show? Here’s your play:

• Email them at the 2-minute mark: “We’re on! Putting the Zoom at your fingertips.”
• Call them at the 5-minute mark.
• Call them again at the 8-minute mark (the only time it’s acceptable to double dial).

If that doesn’t work and they’ve no-showed, never delete the invite. Move it 3-4 days out and send backup times over email, using a touch of guilt in your message:

Stay on it. It’s far easier to keep a meeting than it is to find a new one.

Putting It All Together: Your Golden 3 Cheat Sheet

Here it is, including benchmarks for each metric and ways to improve them:

Eliminate junk dials, squeeze the juice out of every cold call, set sticky meetings with the right people.

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That's a wrap folks! This is just a small taste of chapter 6 on "Maximizing Your Dial Conversion" from our upcoming book.

If you liked this, you can order the book here: