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“Tried twice, no answer” is where a lot of good leads end. Here is what the data says about how many calls it takes to reach someone, which popular numbers are made up, and how to keep trying without becoming a nuisance.
A lead comes in. The rep calls at 10 in the morning: no answer. They try again after lunch: voicemail. The lead goes on the “tried, no response” pile, and the rep moves on to the next one. Nobody decided to give up on it. There was simply a newer lead to call.
A third call feels pushy. Most people would rather not be the caller who will not take the hint, even when the only hint was a busy afternoon.
New leads look more promising. A fresh enquiry feels warmer than one that has not picked up twice, so it gets the next call.
Nobody tracks attempt three. Unless the CRM reminds them, the third try depends on someone remembering it, on a day that already has too many calls in it.
The tries happen at the same time of day. Two calls during the rep’s working hours reach the lead during theirs, which may be exactly when they cannot pick up.
Velocify, a sales software company, looked at about 3.5 million leads from more than 400 of its customers and asked, for the leads that went on to convert, which call first reached them.
Put the other way round: stopping after two calls would have missed three in ten of the leads that eventually became customers.
This is vendor data from leads created in 2012, and it measures leads that converted rather than all leads. It is still the most detailed attempt-by-attempt count we could find.
Far fewer. When InsideSales sent test enquiries to 9,538 companies, the typical company made one attempt to contact the lead. Only 22% phoned at all, and more than a third of those phoned just once. In later data from its own software, 81% of sellers made five or fewer follow-up attempts.
Two of the most quoted follow-up statistics have nothing behind them.
The real numbers in the sections above make the point on their own.
Enough to reach people at a few different times of day over a couple of days. In Velocify's data, nine in ten of the leads that converted had been reached by the fifth call.
No. Once they pick up, that round of calls ends, whatever they said. If they enquire again later, they are called again.
Only if you include those times in your calling hours. Otherwise a try waits for the next window.
See an AI agent work through your follow-up schedule, stop the moment someone answers, and record every try.