Episode 7: When Is The Best Time To Make a Cold Call?

Rob 0:07
All right, welcome back to the slope pitch podcast. And this time we are going to be talking about cold calls. And when is the best time to make a cold call? Do you know when the best time to make a cold call is like,

Lane 0:18
it’s never a best time to make a call? And why? Why is that? Who wants to have their day disturbed by the phone ringing? It’s not a number. Anyone recognizes? You look at that phone and go. I don’t want to answer that.

Rob 0:30
You know, I mostly agree. I mostly agree with that. And I think most people don’t want to cold calls. Unless they’re kind of an entertaining and fun call that people can when they hang out, they laugh. They’re like, yeah, that was pretty good, actually. And that can happen. And while I would say, well, that’s another a whole other episode we can get into how to make a really good cold call. The real question I want to answer today is when is a good time to make a cold call? And so the short answer to me is now, if you’re thinking now, yeah, right now, like, if you’re thinking, should I be making a phone call right now? And unless it’s in the middle of night, when you’re listening to this? I would say, any day, anytime is a good time to listen. That’s my first answer.

Lane 1:08
Well, I would say, Wait till you’re done listening to this and then make the cold call.

Rob 1:12
Well, okay. Yes, I guess that’s true. You probably want to hear the rest of what we have to talk about, probably, but, but for the most part, you shouldn’t be waiting. In other words, what I’m trying to say is, everybody stalls everybody waits. everybody’s like, well, I don’t know that phone looks really heavy. I don’t think I can lift that thing up. Right. And it’s one of those things I’m not sure I want to do. And I get that. So the first thing I would say is just pick up the phone and start dialing when it’s time and don’t even think about it Don’t think about what you’re going to say, other than Hello, my name is. And that’s it, right? That’s how you get out. And then once you started that, you’re kind of stuck, you got to get going, you got to start saying something, right. So if they don’t just hang up on you if they don’t, but you know, what, if they do do another one, you got to talk to somebody, right? So but is there a good time? Or is there a best time to do that? And I think there is. So here’s what my my first thing that goes, my brain goes to, I have noticed that incoming calls come in a specific day and time. And I can look that up on analytics on Google, because I can see when people look at my website, I can see them look, that’s when I have the most traffic. And ironically, that’s when I get the most calls or incoming emails. So that’s when people are out there looking. So if they’re out there looking, the odds are that I would have a possibly a better time to catch them at a slow time of their day. That’s number one.

Lane 2:30
So So what you’re saying is, is there’s times of the day that you’d like me to turn your website off?

Rob 2:34
No, there’s not. But there, there is times that when prospects call, that’s probably a good time to make the phone calls. Now, when do you make phone calls now that are cold? If you make cold calls? Do you track that? Do you see what day? What time? Do You Do you understand? These are the days and times that you typically call outgoing? Cold? And by looking at that list? Do you identify when you get the most responses. So my challenge to you would be if you’re going to make a phone call, and they’re cold. You don’t know if this is a good time or not track it. Start writing it down on a Tuesday, three o’clock in the afternoon. This is what I call and how many calls did you make? How many positive results? Did

Lane 3:18
you get that that’s a great point. Because I mean, it’s the same thing when you’re, you’re creating ads, display ads, or even social media posts you’re trying to get get out there with those analytics as to when’s the best time for the most eyeballs.

Rob 3:32
Yeah, and by looking at that list, when you started putting those times and dates together, the days of the week, where the time you can see this is what it was highly effective. And you know, I got some results, I get people to answer the phone during this hour of this day. That’s a good time to call again in the future. Because that’s when there’s a little bit of a rhythm to business. And, you know, I the worst time probably for most people the call is nine o’clock on a Monday morning

Lane 3:57
or four o’clock on a Friday yet, or four o’clock.

Rob 3:59
You know what I would disagree with that, believe it or not. So here’s, here’s what I found. And this is kind of getting a little bit ahead. But on a Friday, I have found if I start cold calling at three o’clock on Friday, and call for two hours, I get more responses, more answers and more interesting conversations going on a Friday between three and 5pm that any other day of the week. Really? Yeah. Because you know why? They’re wrapping up anyway. They’re tired. They don’t want to work there anymore. They’re thinking about the weekend. Okay, I’ll answer that phone call. Because I don’t want to work any more for the week. So I’ll answer the phone call. And even if this cold call, I’ll answer it right. That’s there. That seems to be what happens.

Lane 4:36
That’s amazing, because I would be totally the opposite of I’m not answering that call. I know what it is. It’s three o’clock on a Friday. That ain’t gonna happen.

Rob 4:46
Really? Because I feel like most people when they see the phone call at three o’clock on a Friday, like who’s calling me on a Friday at three o’clock? Hmm, I gotta know who this is. It’s like a weird. It’s a weird scenario. That’s the times that I have found when I make phone calls. calls that it’s most effective. Now, that is not always the case every Friday, three o’clock to five, I’m not saying that’s the case. But when I look at the trend over the course of couple years, when I’ve had those phone calls between three and five on a Friday afternoon, they tend to have better results. So, wow, eye tracking. That’s how you find that out. And then the other thing you want to track is when you get zero results, when you get zero answers. Nobody answers the phone, nobody’s there. It’s crickets. Ghost Town, it’s like nothing going on. Obviously, when you run into that scenario, that is probably not the best time to make phone calls. And it usually mirrors analytics. When I look at the Google Analytics, same thing. If you call on a Tuesday afternoon at you know, 544 o’clock in the afternoon, no results. And yeah, maybe the maybe the website, I’m not getting a lot of results, then to you know, if that’s the case. So what I find is that seems to be consistent with their whole thing. So what I would recommend is I would structure your calling times to fit that when you get the best results. Does that make sense?

Lane 6:06
No, that absolutely makes sense. Yeah. What I don’t like about that is that I have to make a lot of phone calls a lot of cold calls, to figure out what those times are, though. Yes. But

Rob 6:15
if you think about it in terms of instead of I have to make phone calls, think about it this way, I get to make phone calls, so that I get to figure out when is the best time to get the best results so that the results are so positive that I look forward to my next phone call. Isn’t that weird?

Lane 6:34
You sound like me when I’m trying to convince my kids to eat vegetables. You don’t have to eat the broccoli, you get to eat the broccoli.

Rob 6:40
But it? It’s true, right? Because if you if you have to, it’s a feeling of regret. It’s a feeling of what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s just like a dread. It’s location. Yeah, the dread. It’s a feeling of Oh, I don’t feel like doing this. But if you actually take a moment and think about in terms of Mike, I got to find out when is the best time to make phone calls. So let’s make 20 right now, figure out if that’s a good time to make them or not. And what any Wow. And make it so that you use your analytics to figure out your Google Analytics, even figure out when the most calls come in, start there. And if you may find that those are the best times to make outgoing calls, and you start getting leads doing that, that you don’t have to find any other days and times you have to keep making phone calls. You get to make more calls. And during a time that people will actually get the results that you think will happen. are cold calls fun. No, I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it just like everybody else. Anybody that tells you they love doing cold calls is a liar. I will tell you that right now. Because there’s no way in the world. I know anybody who says I love making cold calls. No way. I don’t believe I want it. nor would I. So what did you take away from this episode? anything anything valuable out of this episode?

Lane 7:54
No, I really liked the fact that you’re, you know, kind of made that connection with, you know, analytics in general. I mean, we use analytics for a whole lot of other business decisions all the time. And it never really occurred to me that you can apply the same to cold calls to try to find those those perfect times to make make a call.

Rob 8:12
Yeah, good. And don’t tell anybody about that secret because I want to make sure that we’re the most effective people that making cold calls and anybody else and not my competitors, so don’t tell anybody. The mums the word. It’s a secret. So

Lane 8:23
until next time, Bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to the slowpitch podcast. If you enjoy listening, please share on Twitter, Facebook, or via carrier pigeon. Our website is the slow pitch.com if you have any questions or comments, please call or text us at 6088708 slow that’s 608-878-7569 You can also email us at questions at the slow pitch.com we’d love to share your questions or feedback on the podcast.