Cold calling remains one of the most challenging yet essential skills in sales. But success is about more than what you say and how you say it. It’s also about when you say it and how you organize your day around peak performance windows.
Drawing insights from sales leaders and data-driven research, here's how to structure your day to maximize cold calling effectiveness and build a sustainable prospecting rhythm.
Split Your Day Into Three Parts
Megan Huston, SDR manager for an outbound team at ZoomInfo, advocates for a simple but powerful approach to organizing your sales day. "When I have someone that’s brand new and they’re getting all kinds of different advice from different people, I tell them to go ahead and try it all. But I think the way you structure your day is super important.”
Huston’s suggestion: separate your day into three parts.
Part 1: Early Morning
Focus: Your Current Pipeline
Start your day with the accounts you've already researched and organized. This is your current pipeline that you've already built out: you've done all the research and given yourself notes, you’ve already multi-threaded and identified every single person that you want to call at that account. It's all laid out and ready to go. All you need to do is press dial.
The key here is speed and momentum.
"I don't encourage people to source the most brand-new stuff, where they need to export and organize and research the mundane, slow, monotonous details,” Huston says. Save that for later in the day.
Why this works: Morning energy is high, and prospects are often more available before their days get cluttered with meetings. You can work through your prepared list quickly and potentially book several meetings to start your day strong.
Part 2: Late Morning to Early Afternoon
Focus: Pre-Qualified New Accounts
This middle portion of your day should focus on accounts that are still relatively easy to work through quickly, but you can start layering in new accounts you know less about.
"We have a team at ZoomInfo that gets accounts all teed up for us and ready to go,” Huston says. “Maybe we're not familiar with the companies yet, but we can still work through it pretty fast."
Even if you’re not working with a similar team, you likely have pre-selected accounts set aside for just a little more legwork. This is the time to start working them.
Why this works: After you’ve hit the ground running, it’s easy to keep momentum going while starting to add in more complexity.
Part 3: Late Afternoon to End of Day
Focus: Research and Preparation
Toward the end of the day, take the time to do your more extended research. Go through and pick accounts in the ZoomInfo platform, do research on those accounts, and find all your contacts. This makes it easy to start the next day running.
Why this works: This approach creates what Huston calls "delayed gratification" while setting you up for success: "You want to get the really good meat-and-potatoes, fresh new stuff first thing for that next morning. That way, you have a little bit of delayed gratification and you set yourself up for a quick start that following morning."
Timing Your Calls for Maximum Impact
Beyond daily structure, timing within each hour matters significantly. Research shows that calling five minutes before the half-hour and hour marks yields the best results. People naturally plan their schedules around these time markers, making them more likely to be transitioning between activities and available to take calls.
Understanding your prospects' schedules is just as important as knowing your own. What does a day in the life look like for your prospect?
Are they in meetings all day? Maybe their mornings and evenings are a little more open.
What industry are you calling into? Some have hours that don’t fit neatly into a 9-5.
And while you need to hit the phones every day, focus most of your efforts on your most high-impact days. Data from over 1.4 million sales calls reveals that Tuesday and Wednesday are the strongest days for cold calling, accounting for 44% of all demos booked. Monday shows the highest call-to-demo conversion rate at 1.19%, while Friday performs worst across all metrics.
Key Principles for Daily Success
1. Prepare During Low-Energy Times
Use your natural energy dips for research and administrative tasks. Save your peak energy for actual conversations.
2. Batch Similar Activities
Group your calling, research, and follow-up activities into dedicated blocks rather than switching between them throughout the day.
3. Consider Time Zones Strategically
Keep time zones in mind to make sure you’re calling prospects at their ideal time. So if you’re on the East Coast, that might mean calling during your lunch hour to capitalize on those West Coast mornings.
4. Test and Adjust
Call at different times of the day and on different days to really test what works best for you and your prospects. And if one time didn’t work? Switch it up — calling a prospect at the same time of day, same day of the week, over and over and over again won’t get you results.
The Bottom Line
Structuring your day is about efficiency, but it’s about sustainability too.
“Just normalize that you're doing a very difficult job,” Huston says. “There are people that spend eight hours a day doing a job where they talk to no one, but you chose a job where you're talking to people throughout the day and opening yourself up to objections and rejection.
“It's hard, but it's going to feel so good when you get it down."
By organizing your day around your energy levels, prospect availability, and the natural rhythm of business, you'll not only improve your results but also make the challenging work of cold calling more manageable and sustainable over time.
Remember: the goal is progress, not perfection. Start with this framework, test what works for your specific situation, and adjust accordingly. Your future self (and your quota) will thank you.