Best time to make sales calls? Find your own from four weeks of your call log

The best time to make sales calls to business buyers is 10 to 11am or 4 to 5pm, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Avoid lunchtime, late Friday and anything after office hours.

Use that as your first guess for this week. The answer you can rely on comes from your own call log, because each list of buyers keeps different hours.

If someone has just sent you an enquiry, ignore all of this and call as soon as you can. Lead response time covers why the first hour matters.

Four companies publish their own call data or survey results on this question, and each one says something different.

They agree on one thing: Friday is a poor day to book a meeting. ZoomInfo found Tuesday and Wednesday together produced 44% of the demos booked in its data, and Friday came last on each measure it tracked (ZoomInfo). Salesmate's study counted 63 successful first-attempt conversations for Fridays against 136 for Wednesdays (Salesmate).

In HubSpot's survey, 51% of regular cold callers named late morning as their most productive time, and only 6 to 11% said late afternoon (HubSpot). Salesmate's call data put 4 to 5pm first. And Cognism's page says Friday was its worst day for booking meetings but its best for conversations (Cognism), while ZoomInfo found Friday worst for connecting too.

Part of the split is what each one counts. A survey records what reps believe works; a call log records what happened. ZoomInfo counts demos and Salesmate counts first-attempt conversations. Cognism ranks its hours by talk time. The sellers and buyers behind each set differ too, none of them is a study of Singapore buyers, and Salesmate's page dates its study to 2017. ZoomInfo's page adds that no large study has repeated the older work since the pandemic, while hybrid work and call filtering have changed who picks up.

• 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 contractor picks up on the way to the site, or after work.
• A senior buyer at a large company often answers only at the edges of the day, when their assistant isn't screening calls.
• Someone buying for their own household is easier to reach after work, where the rules allow it.

Much of the research that does exist comes from calling-software and data companies analysing their own customers' calls. That says little about the people on your list.

Until your log says otherwise, spend the week like this. It follows ZoomInfo's day-by-day numbers, where Monday's call-to-demo rate of 1.19% was the highest of the week, on lower volume.

Weekends stay off for business buyers. So do public holidays, and MOM's list is worth a look before you plan a week. Chinese New Year 2027 falls on 6 and 7 February, with Monday 8 February also a holiday for anyone whose rest day is the 7th.

Before you plan any call block, check the rules where the person you're calling lives. They override any "best time" advice.

In Singapore, PDPC's guide says to check a number against the Do Not Call Registry before a marketing call or text. The check has to fall within 21 days before you send it, unless you have clear and unambiguous consent. The rules don't apply to business-to-business messages sent to an organisation's contact details, such as an office line. They do apply if you're also selling for the person's own use. Your manager or compliance lead can tell you how your firm runs the check.

In the US, a telemarketing call to someone's home outside 8am to 9pm, their local time, breaks the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule unless they've agreed to it. Other countries have their own registers and rules, and the cold calling guide covers what to check.

Count in their time zone

If your list covers more than Singapore, use the buyer's clock. The hours above are their local time.

1. Add a city or time zone to each contact.
2. Work out your best block in each zone's local time.
3. Group the list so each zone gets called inside its own block.
4. Skip anyone whose local time falls outside the hours the rules allow.

Skip these hours, whoever you sell to:

• Outside the legal hours where the buyer lives.
• During your buyers' busiest hours: lunch service for a restaurant owner, school pick-up for a parent, month-end for a bookkeeper.
• After working hours, for business buyers: Cognism's page lists after hours, weekends and bank holidays among its worst times, along with lunchtime and anything before 10am.
• Late Friday, if you're trying to book a meeting.

Is 7pm too late? For business buyers, yes: most have gone home, and a call then reads as a sales call before you've said a word. For calls to homes in the US, the FTC's rule allows calls until 9pm local time, but only call then if they asked you to.

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.

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. Some sellers call ten minutes before the hour, before the next meeting starts; give it a block and see.

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.

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.

Once you know your best hours, protect them:

1. Put a recurring call block in your calendar at that time, on each working day you sell.
2. Build the list for the block the day before, so you start dialling when it opens.
3. Check the numbers on it. Take off anyone who has left the firm, and use a direct line where you have one. A wrong number wastes the hour however well you timed it.
4. Keep everything else out of it: email, proposals, internal meetings.
5. Put work that needs less of the buyer's attention, like research, admin and proposals, in the hours they don't pick up.

The daily sales routine template lays out a day around a call block, and the cold calling script covers what to say once someone picks up.

How many calls fit in a block depends on your job. HubSpot's survey found 30% of daily cold callers make 20 to 50 calls a week, 22% make 51 to 100, 22% make 100 to 200 and 12% make more. ZoomInfo's page gives 40 to 80 a day as a typical range for full-time prospectors. It rates 50 calls in the peak hours above 100 spread around the week.

Check again each quarter. Buyers' days shift with seasons, holidays and their own busy periods.

Decide in advance what happens next:

1. Call back in a different block. If you rang at 10am, try 3pm next time.
2. Leave a short voicemail when you have a reason: your name, one line on why, and when you'll try again.
3. Send one short, personal message if they gave you their number, so they can reply when it suits them.
4. Try up to six times over two weeks, then move them to a slower list: one useful note a month by email or LinkedIn, and a check-in each quarter. The sales cadence guide lays out the sequence.

HubSpot's research says 55% of cold callers make three to five attempts and 26% make one or two, with 4% making nine to 12. Salesmate's study counted 489 conversations on the first attempt, 281 more on the second and 328 on the third, and it advises six attempts.

When you do get through at a bad moment, ask: "Is later today better, or tomorrow?" Two options are easier to answer than an open question. Write their answer down and call at exactly that time. Cognism's report puts the average cold call at 83 seconds, so have your first line ready when it's your turn.

• Copying someone else's rule. "Thursday at 4pm" works for their buyers, and yours may keep different hours.
• Judging a block 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.
• Booking the block, then doing email in it. Log the calls and you'll see how much of it was really calls.

• ZoomInfo, The best days to cold call, ranked by its own call data, read 2 November 2026
• HubSpot, The best time to make a sales call, with its 2025 survey of 379 sales professionals, read 2 November 2026
• Cognism, When is the best time to cold call, from its State of Cold Calling Report 2025, read 2 November 2026
• Salesmate, The best time to make sales calls, from its own study, read 2 November 2026
• PDPC, Organisation's guide to Singapore's Do Not Call (DNC) provisions, read 2 November 2026
• Ministry of Manpower, Public holidays, read 2 November 2026
• Federal Trade Commission, Complying with the Telemarketing Sales Rule: calling time restrictions, read 2 November 2026