How many cold calls does it take to get one customer?

How many cold calls to get a customer? It depends on four rates, and you can work it out in a minute: calls per customer = 1 ÷ (connect rate × meeting rate × show rate × close rate). In the worked example below, a team with a 20% connect rate, a 20% meeting rate, an 80% show rate and a 25% close rate needs 125 calls for one new customer. Those are example numbers, not a benchmark. Your own numbers will be different, and they are the only ones that count.

The calling funnel in four simple steps

Think of each call as a marble rolling through four sieves. At every sieve, some marbles fall out. The ones that make it through all four become customers.

1. Connect. You reach the person you wanted to speak to and have a real conversation. Connect rate = conversations ÷ call attempts.
2. Meeting. The conversation ends with a booked meeting. Meeting rate = meetings booked ÷ conversations.
3. Show. The meeting actually happens. Show rate = meetings held ÷ meetings booked.
4. Close. The meeting turns into a new customer. Close rate = new customers ÷ meetings held.

Count every dial as a call attempt, including the ones where nobody answers or you reach voicemail. They cost time too. Leave them out and your math looks better than reality.

Worked example: from 125 calls to one customer

The numbers below are an illustration. They are round, made-up numbers chosen so the math is easy to follow. They are not an average for any industry.

So in this example, 100 calls produce 0.8 customers on average, and 125 calls produce one. Along the way you also learn a second useful number: 125 calls gave 5 booked meetings, so one meeting costs 25 calls.

The formula: calls per customer

Write each rate as a decimal (20% is 0.20), multiply them, and divide 1 by the result.

Calls per customer = 1 ÷ (connect rate × meeting rate × show rate × close rate)

With the example numbers: 1 ÷ (0.20 × 0.20 × 0.80 × 0.25) = 1 ÷ 0.008 = 125 calls.

Two shorter versions are handy too:

• Calls per meeting = 1 ÷ (connect rate × meeting rate). Example: 1 ÷ (0.20 × 0.20) = 25.
• Meetings held per customer = 1 ÷ close rate. Example: 1 ÷ 0.25 = 4.

Calls per meeting: the number your callers feel

Calls per customer is the number for the business owner. Calls per meeting is the number for the caller. In the example, one booked meeting takes 25 attempts. That means 24 calls end without a meeting, and that is normal. A caller who knows this keeps going after a run of no's, because the math says the yes is coming.

It also helps to split the funnel between people. In many teams, the caller books the meeting and someone else runs it. Then the caller owns the first two steps (connect and meeting rate) and the person in the meeting owns the last two (show and close rate). Each person gets a target they can actually influence.

Table: calls per customer at different rates

This table keeps the show rate at 80% and the close rate at 25%, and changes only the connect rate and the meeting rate. All numbers are illustrations, rounded up to whole calls.

Look at the corners. At 10% and 10%, you need 500 calls per customer. At 30% and 30%, you need 56. Same product, same close rate, roughly nine times fewer calls. That is why the rates matter more than raw effort.

How to turn it into a weekly call target per caller

Now work backwards from the number of customers you want. Fill in this worksheet with your own numbers. The example numbers continue the illustration above.

1. Goal. New customers per week. Example: 2.
2. Calls per customer. From the formula. Example: 125.
3. Calls per week = goal × calls per customer. Example: 2 × 125 = 250.
4. Calls per day = calls per week ÷ calling days. Example: 250 ÷ 5 = 50.
5. Calls per caller per day = calls per day ÷ number of callers. Example: 50 ÷ 2 = 25.

Then check whether the target fits in a real day. Time one focused calling hour and count the attempts. If 25 attempts take you two hours, block two hours in the calendar every day. Calling time disappears fast otherwise: in the fifth State of Sales survey by Salesforce, reps said they spent only 28% of their week actually selling.

Plan with real calling weeks, not 52

A yearly goal needs one more correction. A year has 52 weeks, but nobody calls in all of them. In Belgium, a full-time employee on a five-day week gets up to 20 days of statutory annual leave, and there are 10 public holidays (both pages are in Dutch). Together that is already six weeks. In the Netherlands, the statutory minimum is four times the number of days worked per week, so 20 days for a five-day week, and employers can agree to give more.

Example: you want 80 new customers this year and expect 44 real calling weeks after leave, holidays, illness and training. That is 80 ÷ 44 = about 1.8 customers per week, or about 228 calls per week at 125 calls per customer.

How many leads you need on your list

Calls are not the same as leads. One lead often takes several attempts before you reach the person, or before you decide to stop trying. So also track the average number of attempts per lead.

Leads needed per week = calls per week ÷ average attempts per lead

Example: 250 calls per week and an average of 2.5 attempts per lead means about 100 fresh leads per week. A list of 600 leads then lasts roughly six weeks. A clear plan for repeat attempts makes every lead go further. See our guide on sales follow-up.

How improving one step changes everything

The steps multiply, so a small gain at any step has a big effect on the end result. Here is the example team again, with one change at a time. These are illustrations, not promises.

Two improvements of five percentage points each take the team from 125 to 80 calls per customer. That is 36% fewer calls for the same result. Or, with the same 250 calls a week, just over 3 customers instead of 2.

Which step should you work on first? Usually the one where you are furthest below your own best caller or your own best campaign. That gap shows what is possible with your list and your offer. Our guide on coaching a sales team with data shows how to find that step for each caller.

Use your own numbers, not someone else's benchmark

It is tempting to borrow a connect rate from a report or a forum. Be careful. Teams define a "connect" in different ways, markets differ, and the quality of a list changes everything. A borrowed number can make your plan look easy or impossible, and both are misleading.

A better approach for sales activity planning:

1. Write down one definition per step and share it with the team.
2. Log one outcome for every call.
3. Measure two to four weeks per campaign before you trust the rates. A rate based on twenty calls can swing wildly from one day to the next.
4. Recalculate every month, because rates move when lists, offers and callers change.

Defining the steps pays off beyond the math. In a survey of 62 B2B companies described in Harvard Business Review, there was an 18% difference in revenue growth between companies that had defined a formal sales process and companies that had not.

Rather not do this by hand? Ringlane builds these rates from your team's own calls and has a rhythm calculator that works out how many calls per week and per day it takes to win one new customer per week, based on your closing rate and your real connect and meeting rates. For the meaning of each metric, see our guide to cold calling KPIs.

Common mistakes in sales funnel math

• Forgetting no-shows. A booked meeting is not a held meeting.
• Counting leads instead of attempts. Your connect rate then looks better than it is.
• Mixing campaigns into one average. A strong list and a weak list together hide both.
• Only setting a call target. Without the rates, more calls can simply mean more wasted calls.
• Expecting results in the same week. Meetings and deals come later, so today's calls feed next month's customers.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Harvard Business Review: Companies with a Formal Sales Process Generate More Revenue (Jordan and Kelly, 2015)
2. Salesforce: State of Sales research, fifth edition
3. Belgian social security portal: Jaarlijkse vakantie (annual leave)
4. FPS Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue (Belgium): Feestdagen (public holidays)
5. Business.gov.nl: Holiday entitlement for employees in the Netherlands