The sales world doesn’t miss any opportunity to look for a prospect but in order to make a prospecting call effective, the only question buzzes in the sales reps’ mind, “what is the best time to make a call?”. Instead of researching a prospect’s account and spending lots of time to know his/her convenient time, all sales reps just look for the answer to this question.
These days most of the sales reps are immediately shifting to sending follow up emails if the calls go unresponsive rather than trying to know the appropriate time to call the prospects. According to Mashable report, most people delete 48% of the emails they receive every day. Hence, if your calls are unresponsive, sending follow up emails is not a great idea.
Instead, knowing the best time to call the prospects can provide you better results.
The best days of the week to make a sales call
Based on the basic logic, Monday is not an ideal day to make sales calls as it is the first day of the week. Generally, people are not in the mood to speak on a phone with salespeople on this day and they focus more than anything on the strategy of that week.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the good days to connect with people for prospecting purposes. These are the middle days of the week and people have a clear strategy in front of them for the week. They can shift their focus for some time to the sales call.
Friday is not definitely an ideal day to make sales call as it is the last working day of the week. People from management and other higher-level position have their business closing calls, important meetings with clients, planning for the next week, etc. Therefore, Friday is the worst day to make sales call.
Now let’s see the proven reports generated after a study to find the best day to make sales calls. According to SalesMate, Wednesday is the first best day of the week to attempt the sales calls. 136 calls have been responsive in the first attempt on Wednesday and 113 calls have a good conversation on Thursday. Hence, Thursday is the second-best day of the week to make the sales call.
92 successful calls have been made on Tuesday and it is proven that Tuesday is the third-best day of the week to make a sales call.
As we have already discussed the reason for the ineffectiveness of Monday and Friday, the survey report is also aligned with our point. Only 85 and 63 successful calls have been made on Monday and Friday. There fore, Friday is the worst day of the week for the sales calls.
The percentage of the difference between the best day and worst day is 53.67% which is quite huge for the sales team. Choosing these three days (Wednesday, Thursday and Tuesday) to make sales calls can make a great difference than calling on random days. You can also try phone systems with detailed analytics to help you determine the best days call.
Best time of the day to make a sales call
Now we are pretty much aware of the best days of the week when sales reps should make sales calls. Again the question arises, what time of those days are ideal to reach the prospects. If we breakdown the entire day, we will find very minimal hours that appear as the ideal hours to get in touch with the prospects. From Morning 10 am to evening at 5 pm are office hours and after 5 pm most of the prospects don’t prefer to attend any sales calls.
Let’s see the survey report to find the ideal time to reach out to the leads successfully.
As per SalesMate study, the ineffective time to make the sales calls is 5 pm to 6 pm whereas the best time of the day is 4 pm to 5 pm. As per the report, the successful conversion happened in the first attempt when the calls were made between 4 pm to 5 pm. The number of conversions is 108.
The second best timing is 10 am to 11 am to make the sales calls. 94 successful conversions happened when the sales calls were made between 10 am to 11 am.
The difference in the conversions between ineffective timing and the most effective timing is 88.88%.
If you have the leaky buckets and you are wondering where it is, then this is time to focus on the effective days of the week and effective time of the day to make the sales calls then calling in random days and time.
For example, you have a list of leads to make calls but it is hard to make all calls within the aforementioned time frame. According to the above report, other second best and third best time like 11 am to 12 am and 3 pm to 4 pm is also effective to make your call success.
Now we have the overall idea of the best day of the week and the best timing of the day to make the sales calls. Now let’s see which days of the week gain more qualified leads.
Days of the week – initial successful dials
As per Insidesales.com, Thursday and Wednesday are the most effective days to make the sales calls.
If you observe this report, the highest successful attempts are done on middle days those are 2.26 and 2.34. The worst day of the week is Tuesday. The difference between the best day and the worst day is 49.7%.
Days of the week – to Have Qualified Leads From Initial Contact
Sometimes, initial calls also bring qualified leads. When it comes to qualifying the leads, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the ideal days.
Though the ideal day of the week is Thursday for successful attempts, Wednesday is the best day of the week to qualify the leads. Friday is the worst day when it comes to qualifying the leads. Therefore, Wednesday is 24.9% better than the worst day.
Days of The Week – To Have Qualified Leads From Already Contacted Lead
The aforementioned points are about the successful attempts and the qualified leads from the initial contacts. Now let’s see the best days of the week to make the sales calls to have qualified leads Who are already been contacted.
Source: LeadResponseManagement
Thursday is the most effective day of the week to call the leads who have already been contacted to qualify them. It is 2.18 which is the highest number compared to other days. The worst day is Friday for qualifying the leads. The best day is 19.1% better than the worst day.
Bottom Line
Here we have compared two different surveys. The common best day of the week to make the sales calls from both surveys are Wednesday and Thursday. Though there is a difference between both the reports regarding the worst day, but our focus is on the best days of the week to reach out to the leads to have better results.
Both the report shows Friday is the ineffective day to call the leads. The reason is quite obvious. It is the last working of the week and most of the people will have last moment work as a client meeting, weekly report preparation, upcoming week’s strategy, etc. In these cases, they will not prefer to answer any sales calls. Once it is later than 5 pm, the weekend plan will be running in their head. Most people don’t prefer to deal with a business talk from Friday evening to Monday morning. Therefore, ignoring Friday to make the sales calls is a good idea.
When it comes to the time of the day, we have taken only one survey that shows 5 pm to 6 pm is the best time and 10 am to 11 am is the second-best time to call the prospects.
There are several sales reps don’t find their leaky bucket. If you are going through the same situation, try these days and time to reach out to your prospects. If your follow up call schedules are very tight on those effective days, you can postpone your reach-out calls to next week or you can try on the third-best day. But don’t choose the worst day of the week and the worst time of the day to make the sales calls. The result will be even worse than your current result.
