The short answer
The best time to make sales calls is when your buyers are most likely to pick up and have a few minutes to talk. For most business buyers that's outside their busiest hours: before the day's meetings start, or later in the afternoon once they've cleared the urgent things.
Treat that as a starting guess. The only answer you can rely on is the one in your own call log.
Why the published advice disagrees
Read the pages that rank for this search and you'll find one says call between 9 and 11am, another says 11am to noon, and a third says 4 to 5pm. Most agree midweek is better than Monday or Friday. Few link the study the advice came from.
They disagree because the answer depends on who you're calling:
- A restaurant owner is free mid-afternoon, between lunch and dinner service, and impossible to reach at noon.
- An office manager answers early, before the meetings start.
- A tradesperson picks up at 7am, on the way to the job, or after 5pm.
- A senior buyer at a large company might only answer at the edges of the day, when their assistant isn't screening calls.
- Someone buying for their own household is easier to reach in the evening, where the rules allow it.
Much of the research that does exist comes from calling-software companies analysing their own customers' calls. That's useful for those customers. It may say little about the people on your list.
There's one exception where timing is clear-cut. When someone has just filled in a form or sent you an enquiry, the best time to call is as soon as you can. Lead response time covers why the first hour matters.
Check the calling-hour rules first
Before you plan any call block, check the rules where the person you're calling lives. They override any "best time" advice.
In the US, the FTC's guide to complying with the Telemarketing Sales Rule says a telemarketing call to someone's home before 8am or after 9pm, their local time, breaks the rule unless they've agreed to it. The same guide covers the National Do Not Call Registry. Other countries have their own registers and rules, and the cold calling guide covers what to check.
Remember time zones. Your 9am can be someone else's 6am.
Find your own best hours from your call log
You need four weeks of calls with three things written down for each one: the time, the day, and what happened.
For the outcome, use three levels:
- Connected: someone picked up.
- Conversation: you spoke to the right person for more than a minute.
- Meeting: you booked one.
A sales call log with one row per call does this. So does any tool that timestamps each call you log.
Then, during those four weeks, spread your calls across the day on purpose. If you only ever call at 10am, you'll only ever learn about 10am. Try early, mid-morning, early afternoon and late afternoon, on different days.
At the end of the four weeks, count by time block. You're looking for the block where the most dials turn into conversations. Meetings matter most, but there are usually too few of them to compare blocks fairly.
| Time block | Dials | Conversations | Conversations per 10 dials |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 to 10am | [count] | [count] | [work out] |
| 10am to noon | [count] | [count] | [work out] |
| 1 to 3pm | [count] | [count] | [work out] |
| 3 to 5pm | [count] | [count] | [work out] |
Treat small numbers with care. Twenty dials in a block isn't enough to judge it. Aim for at least 50 before you trust the difference, and only act on a clear gap between blocks.
Made-up example: a rep selling uniform hire to restaurants, cafes and hotels logs every call for four weeks, 320 dials in all.
Week 1: she calls at her usual time, 10 to 11:30am. Owners keep saying "we're setting up for lunch, call back later".
Weeks 2 to 4: she spreads her calls across the day on purpose. The list stays the same kind of business throughout.
After four weeks, her log shows:
8 to 10am: 70 dials, 9 conversations.
10am to noon: 90 dials, 8 conversations.
2:30 to 4:30pm: 110 dials, 31 conversations.
5 to 6pm: 50 dials, 6 conversations.
The afternoon block gives her about three conversations per 10 dials. Every other block gives about one. She moves her main call block to 2:30 to 4:30pm, and keeps mornings for proposals and admin.
A month later, her conversations per week are up from about 12 to about 20, with the same number of dials.
Your pattern will be different. That's the point of logging it.
Plan your call blocks around what you find
Once you know your best hours, protect them:
- Put a recurring call block in your calendar at that time, every working day you sell.
- Build the list for the block the day before, so you start dialling when it opens.
- Keep everything else out of it: email, proposals, internal meetings.
- Put the work that needs less of the buyer's attention, like research, admin and proposals, in the hours they don't pick up.
A daily sales routine shows one way to lay out the day around a call block.
Check again every quarter. Buyers' days shift with seasons, holidays and their own busy periods, and a block that worked in March may not work in December.
Once you know your best hours, the job is keeping them for calls. ActivityTracker times the hour you set aside for calls, lets you end early for a client and keep the minutes, and shows this week's focus time.
What doesn't work
- Copying someone else's rule. "Thursday at 4pm" might be right for their buyers and wrong for yours.
- Judging from one good afternoon. Two meetings in an hour feels like a pattern. It usually isn't until you've seen it over weeks.
- Only calling at your favourite time, so you never learn whether another block would work better.
- Calling your best block in theory, and doing email in it in practice. Time the block, and you'll see how much of it was really calls.