On the Sales Montana floor, the overall cold calling connect rate was 40.4% across 14,171 outbound calls between August 7 and October 18, 2026 (29 organizations, 23 reps, 34 campaigns). By hour of day in Eastern time, noon through 4 p.m. held between 39.6% and 45.9%; 5 p.m. dropped to 35.2%. By weekday, Tuesday through Friday sat between 40.5% and 41.9%; Monday fell to 35.9%. The tables below only report cells with at least 1,000 calls behind them. A call is counted connected when Telnyx reported an answered status and the call lasted more than 30 seconds.
By Nabil Irfan, founder of Sales Montana · Updated
| What is Sales Montana? | |
|---|---|
| Sales Montana is a power dialer and CRM for B2B teams. Montana, its AI head of sales, finds leads, reviews every interaction and tells each rep where to focus. He grades every connected call and writes each rep's morning brief. One flat price for the platform, pay as you go for leads and minutes: Engine is $99 a month flat for up to 3 users, Pro is $297 a month flat for unlimited users. The numbers below come from our own platform; we aggregated them so no customer is identified. About Sales Montana. |
The query runs against the calls table on our platform. A call is counted as outbound and connected when Telnyx reported an answered status and the call lasted more than 30 seconds. The 30-second floor removes voicemails that answered instantly and misdials, leaving calls that lasted long enough for a cold-calling opener. The sample covers August 7 to October 18, 2026 (72 days): 14,171 outbound calls, 29 organizations, 23 reps, 34 campaigns, aggregated. Hour-of-day and weekday figures are computed in Eastern time. We do not report any cell with fewer than 1,000 calls behind it. The lists these calls were worked from mix prospecting lists, warm callbacks and follow-ups, so this is a floor-wide number, not a pure cold-call-to-a-stranger benchmark. See the power dialer page for how the queue places calls.
The overall rate across all 14,171 outbound calls was 40.4%, with an average talk time of 97 seconds on connected calls (checked October 18, 2026). Our floor mixes warm callbacks and worked follow-ups with first-touch dials, so 40% is a floor-wide ceiling. A pure cold list of unvetted numbers will sit lower.
Public roundups from other vendors give lower cold-only ranges, but they report different definitions, time periods and sample sizes, so a direct comparison is not fair without naming each definition. We report ours here and leave vendor-by-vendor comparison to a later page.
On weekdays (Monday to Friday), in Eastern time, the hours with 1,000 or more calls on our floor:
| Hour (ET) | Outbound calls | Connected | Connect rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noon (12 p.m.) | 1,192 | 547 | 45.9% |
| 1 p.m. | 1,670 | 691 | 41.4% |
| 2 p.m. | 1,588 | 629 | 39.6% |
| 3 p.m. | 1,818 | 787 | 43.3% |
| 4 p.m. | 1,852 | 798 | 43.1% |
| 5 p.m. | 2,019 | 711 | 35.2% |
Noon to 4 p.m. held between 39.6% and 45.9%. The 5 p.m. cell dropped to 35.2%. Later cells sat around 22%: 858 calls at 6 p.m. and 762 at 7 p.m. Both sat below the 1,000-call floor by a thin margin, so neither is reported in the main table; the drop is already clear from the 5 p.m. row. We did not have 1,000 or more calls in any hour before 9 a.m. ET, so the morning is not reported here. Your own ICP and list may shift the window.
In Eastern time, across all hours:
| Weekday | Outbound calls | Connected | Connect rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 2,601 | 933 | 35.9% |
| Tuesday | 2,748 | 1,152 | 41.9% |
| Wednesday | 3,057 | 1,239 | 40.5% |
| Thursday | 3,110 | 1,300 | 41.8% |
| Friday | 2,623 | 1,090 | 41.6% |
Tuesday to Friday sat in a 40.5% to 41.9% band. Monday fell about six points behind, at 35.9%, with more than 2,500 calls behind the number. Weekend volume was negligible: 16 calls on Sunday and 16 on Saturday, so no weekend cell is reported.
Our aggregate is a starting point, not a prescription. The hours that work for a Florida-based wholesale list are not the hours that work for a California SaaS buying committee. Three steps to measure your own:
1. Pull your last 90 days of outbound calls. Group by hour of the day in your prospect's time zone, not yours. Count calls per hour and connected calls per hour (same 30-second definition we used, or your own, as long as it is consistent).
2. Keep only hours with at least 100 calls behind them. A connect rate of 60% on 10 calls is noise; the same rate on 100 is a signal.
3. Rank by connect rate and by connected-conversation rate (conversation = a disposition your reps count as a real talk, not just a pickup). Block the top three hours as your daily call block for the next two weeks and check the number again.
In Sales Montana, the floor-analytics view groups calls by hour and weekday and shows each cell's n so you do not have to pull the data yourself. See the power dialer page for how the queue places calls once you pick the window, and the cold calling script page for openers that fit the window you pick.
A floor-wide average hides a lot. Our 40.4% number sits above the cold-only ranges reported elsewhere because the floor also contains:
Warm callbacks that a rep scheduled with a prospect who already answered. Those convert at 60% or above and lift the overall. Second and third follow-ups on contacts who already answered once. Industry-specific lists where carrier spam flags are rare (a small-business wholesale list behaves very differently from a tech-SDR list). Local presence dialing, where the displayed number matches the called area code, which raises pickup rates and is a feature of the power dialer.
We did not break the numbers down by industry on this page because almost none of the industry cells cleared the 1,000-call floor. We will add that view when enough calls land in each cell to publish an honest cut.
What is a typical cold calling connect rate?
On our floor the overall connect rate was 40.4% across 14,171 outbound calls between August 7 and October 18, 2026. A connect means Telnyx reported an answered status and the call lasted more than 30 seconds. The sample spans 29 organizations, 23 reps and 34 campaigns and mixes warm callbacks with first-touch cold dials, so a pure cold list of unverified numbers will sit lower. Any benchmark is only a starting point, because the number moves with list quality, local presence and the time of day you call.
What time of day gets the highest connect rates for cold calls?
On our floor the window from noon to 4 p.m. Eastern on weekdays held the highest connect rates. Noon came in at 45.9%, 1 p.m. at 41.4%, 2 p.m. at 39.6%, 3 p.m. at 43.3% and 4 p.m. at 43.1%. The rate dropped at 5 p.m. to 35.2%; cells after 5 p.m. sat below our 1,000-call floor and are not reported here. We did not have 1,000 or more calls in cells before 9 a.m. ET, so the morning is not reported either. Your own ICP may shift the window; the section below on finding your own best hours shows how to measure it.
Which weekday is best for cold calls?
Tuesday to Friday looked similar on our floor: 41.9%, 40.5%, 41.8% and 41.6% respectively. Monday was the lowest weekday at 35.9%. Each of those cells had more than 2,500 calls behind it. Weekend volume was negligible (16 calls on Sunday, 16 on Saturday), so no weekend cell is reported.
How many calls do I need before my own connect rate is reliable?
At least a few hundred per cell before the number stops bouncing week to week. We required 1,000 calls per reported cell on this page to keep the hourly and weekday figures stable. For a working rule of thumb: 100 calls per cell is enough to spot a bad hour, 1,000 is enough to compare two hours against each other with any confidence.
What counts as a connect in these numbers?
A call is counted as connected when Telnyx reports an answered status and the call lasted more than 30 seconds. The 30-second floor filters out voicemails that answered instantly, misdials and immediate hang-ups, so what remains is a conversation long enough to carry a cold-calling opener. It does not require a positive outcome, only that someone picked up and stayed on long enough for the pitch. Average talk time on connected calls was 97 seconds.
Where did the numbers on this page come from?
From the calls table on our own platform between August 7 and October 18, 2026: 14,171 outbound calls across 29 organizations, 23 reps and 34 campaigns. The query aggregates across all organizations and reports no cell with fewer than 1,000 calls. No organization or client is named. Hour-of-day and weekday numbers are computed in Eastern time. We are Sales Montana, a power dialer and CRM for B2B teams; the data is from our customers' calls, in the aggregate.
Numbers come from the Sales Montana platform, aggregated across 29 organizations between August 7 and October 18, 2026. No organization or client is named. Method note above. See also: power dialer · cold calling script · best power dialers · Sales Montana pricing.
Sales Montana's floor-analytics view groups calls by hour and weekday, with the n per cell, so each rep's window is a number not a guess. Engine $99 a month flat for up to 3 users; Pro $297 flat for unlimited. 14 days or 100 minutes free: a card to start, nothing is charged during the trial.