A recent study by Dr. James Oldroyd Professor at the Kellogg School of Management suggests that cold-calling success may depend less on your sales skills than on how soon you follow up on a lead and the time that your make your cold calls.

Dr. Oldroyd examined the electronic logs of more than a million cold calls, made by thousands of inside sales professionals from around fifty companies. He then applied statistical measurements to extract patterns of success and failure.

Most cold-calling experts recommend putting aside a block of time every weekday to make calls. However he discovered that Thursday is the best day to contact a lead in order to qualify that lead. In fact, it is almost 20 per cent better than Friday, which is the worst day. All the other days fall somewhere in between.

Oldroyd′s study revealed that the absolute worst time to call is right after lunch. In fact, an early morning cold call is 164 per cent more likely to qualify a lead than one made from 1-2 p.m. time slot.

Additional research highlights include:

• Thursday is the best day to contact a lead; Friday the worst.
• The best times to qualify a lead are from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• You are 21 times more likely to qualify a B2B lead by calling within five minutes after the prospect has shown an interest in your product.
• Your best chances of qualifying a B2B lead happen within 20 minutes after interest is shown but it depends upon the industry. In financial services, for example, as long as you call a hot lead within 24 hours, you still have a chance to qualify the lead and move it into your pipeline.
• After 20 minutes, the campaign should adopt a more aggressive approach.
• The best way to contact a lead for qualification-the telephone.
• Mixed media tends to overwhelm and is less effective than generally believed.
• After four months, drop the telephone calling and go to your cheapest nuturing program.
• Companies are adding new inside sales departments at a rate of 7.5 per cent annual growth.
• kForty-one per cent of outside sales activities are conducted over the phone.

Source: bnet.com