Valoram · The Annuity InstituteOutbound Setting Report

Cold-Dial Booking Performance

SDR Jeremy · campaign AnnuityInstitute_Valoram_Income_2026-06-23 - v2. Of 104 people, 44 self-booked and 60 were cold-dialed — this report covers only that 60. Transcript-derived from GHL dials, counted per unique person, voicemail excluded, stopping at booked.

STRENGTH

Strong closer,
weak reach.

Jeremy books half of every real conversation he gets. The funnel bleeds before the conversation, not during it — so the fixes below are about reaching more people, not closing better.

33%

contact rate — reached a human

22%

real-conversation rate

12%

of leads booked

54%

of real conversations booked

The fix, at a glance

Four changes, biggest lever first

LeverTodayTarget

Speed to first dial17 hrs→≤ 8 min

Dials per leadno cap · max 58→cap at 12

When to dialskewed to 3-9pm→12-3pm · Thu

Coverage3 never called→0 uncalled

The setting funnel

60 cold-dialed leads down to booked appointments. Every rung is a unique person, so multi-dial leads can't skew it.

LEAK

Only 33% of leads ever reach a human — but 54% of real conversations book. The leak is reach, not closing.

Non-self-booked leadseveryone Jeremy had to cold-dial · 100% of all leads

100%top of funnel

Reached a humana live pickup, voicemail excluded · 33% of all leads

33%of previous · −40 lost

Real conversationa genuine shot to book · 22% of all leads

65%of previous · −7 lost

Bookedlocked a next appointment · 12% of all leads

54%of previous · −6 lost

The leak is reach, not closing. He never got a live human on 40 of 60 leads, and 7 more pickups were brush-offs. Once he's in a real conversation, booking is strong (54%). every fix below targets reach, not closing (closing already works at 54%). The scorecard above is the whole plan.

Study cross-reference Under-reaching is the industry norm, not a Jeremy problem: an audit of 2,241 firms (incl. financial services) found a median first response of 42 hours with 23% never responding (HBR, 2011), and insurance carriers averaged just 1.45 call attempts per lead with 39% of inquiries never called (Velocify, 2014). The reach gap is the opportunity, the levers below close it.

Speed to lead

How long a non-self-booked lead waits before Jeremy's first dial — the target is an 8-minute hold-then-call.

LEAK

The median lead waits 17 hours for its first dial — about 125× slower than the 8-minute target.

TARGET

8min

hold, then dial the non-bookers

125×slower →

ACTUAL

17hrs

median wait to first dial

only 7% of leads are dialed within 8 minutes

The biggest broken lever. Leads are routed straight to the booking page with the VSL on submit. 87% of self-books happen within 7 minutes (our data, n=45), so an 8-minute hold protects nearly every self-book pay bump, then whoever hasn't booked should be dialed at once, not 17 hours later. hold ~8 minutes, then auto-fire the dial for anyone who hasn't self-booked, and always work the freshest lead first. If you reach an on-page lead, push them to grab a slot on the link (keeps the self-book bonus), never phone-book unless they won't.

Study cross-reference Once the hold is up, fast wins decisively: contact odds are ~100× higher and qualify odds ~21× higher calling at 5 min vs 30 min (MIT/InsideSales, 2007; 15k leads); firms answering within an hour are ~7× more likely to qualify a lead (HBR, 2011; 2,241 firms incl. financial services). Insurance-specific: calling online buyers within 60 sec lifted conversion ~391% (Velocify, 2014, vendor data).

Best time to dial

Pickup rate per window (pickups ÷ dials), so busy hours can't masquerade as good ones.

FIX THIS

The 12-3pm window reaches a live human on 7.1% of dials — about 2.6× better than any other hour — yet it is under-dialed.

1.3%

9am-12pm

151 dials
2 reached

BEST WINDOW

7.1%

12-3pm

212 dials
15 reached

2.7%

3-6pm

414 dials
11 reached

2.1%

6-9pm

419 dials
9 reached

Most dials go to the wrong hours. He pours the bulk of dials into 3-9pm (~2-3% pickup) and under-dials the 12-3pm window that hits 7.1%. Nothing is dialed 9pm-9am, and by day, Thu reaches the most humans per dial. front-load the dialer into 12-3pm first, then 3-6pm, and weight the week toward Thu. Same effort, more humans reached.

Study cross-reference Our Wed/Thu strength matches the classic finding that mid-week is best for reaching leads (Wed-Thu +49.7% vs the worst day; MIT/InsideSales, 2007). On time-of-day the evidence is split, that study found late-afternoon strongest, while a later vendor study rated time-of-day a weak lever overall (~7% best-vs-worst; Velocify, 2016). Treat our 12-3pm peak as directional (n=37 pickups).

Dial discipline: when to stop & where effort leaks

For unreached leads, how the pickup rate per dial decays with depth — and how the total dialing effort is actually spread.

WASTE

Cap unreached leads at 12. 27 leads were dialed 13+ times and never answered once — 528 calls (44% of all dialing) placed past attempt 12, straight into a dead line.

pickup rate per dial ↑higher = still worth calling

dial attempt depth →

90%

of pickups land by dial 12 (18 of 20); only 2 ever needed more (dial 21 and dial 43)

528

calls to the 27 leads who never answered, all placed past attempt 12 — pure wall-dialing

How the 60 leads split by dial count

Leads

391137

Never called1-6 dials7-12 dials13+ dials (over the stop point)

The waste is dialing walls, not following up. 27 leads were dialed 13+ times and never once answered — 528 calls past attempt 12 into a dead line. The other 10 over-dialed leads had already been reached; their extra calls were legitimate follow-up (callback requests, "call me next week" deferrals, booking confirmations), spread over days, one of them had 3 real conversations. Separately, 3 leads got zero calls. cap unreached leads at 12 attempts, then drop them, reached leads follow their own cadence (call back when asked, confirm bookings). Immediately dial the 3 never-called leads and redeploy the 528 wall-dials into fresh leads and faster first-touch.

Study cross-reference Cadence research finds ~6 attempts optimal, 93% of connects by the 6th call, and returns turning negative past 7 (Velocify, vendor data). Our curve agrees the payoff is front-loaded (60% of pickups by dial 6, 90% by 12), so an even 6-12 cap beats dialing a few leads into the ground.

Scope: campaign AnnuityInstitute_Valoram_Income_2026-06-23 - v2. 104 unique persons = 44 self-booked (excluded) + 60 non-self-booked (this report).
Method: transcript classification of Jeremy's GHL dial recordings (real conversation vs brush-off vs voicemail; booked vs not), counted by UNIQUE PERSON (phone/email normalized) so duplicate lead records and self-booker sibling leads cannot inflate a rung. Every rung is a strict subset of the one above (verified by audit_funnel.py). Voicemail never counted. Times in ET (center clock). Directional at this sample size.
Not shown: attendance / show rate — setter-booked Zooms are off-calendar and not yet visible. Fix in progress (capture createdBy.source + Zoom calendar).