What Time’s Best for Sales Prospecting Calls? Study Shows Wednesday at Lunch Time

In sales prospecting, the timing of contacts with your leads can determine whether the lead becomes qualified or is lost to another company. When devising your processes for responding to leads, remember that your best opportunity to convert them to customers can depend on when you contact them.

In most cases, you’ll have greater success if you start developing a relationship with your leads earlier in the sales process. This can mean calling a lead within seconds or minutes of downloading information from your website or otherwise self-qualifying through your inbound marketing processes. Some industry sources, such as the Lead Response Management Study, suggest that calling leads within five seconds can increase the number of qualified leads by as much as 30 percent over those leads called within five minutes.

The day of the week and the time of day that sales prospecting calls are made can also make a significant difference in whether or not they are successful. For many companies, Mondays and Fridays are the most hectic times when sales managers and decision-makers are least likely to be available to take sales calls. Confining sales prospecting calling to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday improves your chances of reaching the person you want to talk to and making a successful call.

Refining this concept further, the best time to make sales calls appears to be on Wednesdays during traditional lunch hours of late morning to early afternoon. This conclusion is based on analysis contained in the B2B Buyer Behavior–Web & Phone Channels Industry View 2013, published by the firm Software Advice. These times represent the midpoint of a typical business week and a point at which managers and sales directors may feel it’s appropriate to take a break, evaluate the week so far, and make preparations for the remainder of the work week. At this point, they’re likely to be more receptive to outside calls that aren’t directly connected to their immediate business concerns.

How could you improve your sales prospecting success by changing the timing of your prospecting calls?

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