Valoram · The Annuity Institute Cold-Dial Outbound Setting Report

SDR Jeremy · 60 cold-dialed leads (44 of 104 self-booked, excluded) · counted per unique person, voicemail excluded, stops at booked.

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Pilot to date

cumulative · 60 leads · per unique person
Dials placed
1,212
57 leads worked · 44% wall-dialed dead leads
goal < 15% wasted
Speed to lead
17hrs
median for 57 leads generated this period
goal ≤ 8 min
Conversation to booked
54%
7 of 13 real conversations
goal ≥ 50%
Leads reached
35%
20 of 57 leads worked reached a human
context · lead quality influences this

Outcome mix

Booked7
Reached, not booked13
Never reached37

Dials by time of day ET

151
9a-12p
212
12-3p
414
3-6p
419
6-9p

Leads by dial count effort spread

2
1-3
7
4-6
7
7-9
4
10-12
37
13+

Do this to book more biggest lever first

1Dial faster17 hrs

Auto-fire the dial after an ~8-min hold, then always work the freshest lead first.

2Stop wall-dialing528 dead-line dials past 12

Cap unreached leads at 12 attempts, then drop them and redeploy into fresh leads.

3Dial the right hours12-3pm, Wed-Fri

Front-load the 12-3pm window, then weight the week toward Wed-Fri. Same effort, more humans.

Week-by-week activity the 4-week burn-down

Wk 1Jun 29
666 dials
57 new leads17 reached4 booked
Wk 2Jul 6
296 dials
no new leads3 reached3 booked
Wk 3Jul 13
154 dials
no new leads0 reached0 booked
Wk 4Jul 20
96 dials
no new leads0 reached0 booked

All 60 leads were delivered in Wk 1 (Jun 26 to Jul 5); no new leads arrived after. Weeks 2 onward re-worked the same backlog, which is why speed-to-lead only exists in Wk 1 and reaches dry up while dials don't: by Wk 4, 96 dials produced 0 new humans. Capping unreached leads at 12 would redeploy that effort, but the bigger question is why lead delivery stopped after 10 days.

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 dial *skewed to 3-9pm→12-3pm* · Wed-Fri
Coverage3 never called→0 uncalled
* Hour-of-day (12-3pm) is directional only. Our sample is small and the studies rate time-of-day a weak lever (~7% best vs worst; Velocify, 2016), so it needs more dialing data to confirm. Day-of-week (Wed-Fri) is corroborated by both our data and MIT/InsideSales.
01

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.

60
Non-self-booked leadseveryone Jeremy had to cold-dial · 100% of all leads
100%top of funnel
20
Reached a humana live pickup, voicemail excluded · 33% of all leads
33%of previous · 40 lost
13
Real conversationa genuine shot to book · 22% of all leads
65%of previous · 7 lost
7
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.
02

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 lets the customer finish their natural self-book journey without an interrupting call, then whoever hasn't booked should be dialed at once, not 17 hours later. hold ~8 minutes so you don't break the funnel momentum, then auto-fire the dial for anyone who hasn't self-booked, and always work the freshest lead first. If you reach a lead who's still on the page, help them grab a slot right there rather than pulling them off their flow.
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).
03

Best time to dial

Pickup rate per window (pickups ÷ dials), so busy hours can't masquerade as good ones. Counts pickup calls, not unique people, so a lead reached in two windows shows in both (these total 37 pickups across the 20 people reached).

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 pickups
BEST WINDOW
7.1%
12-3pm
212 dials
15 pickups
 
2.7%
3-6pm
414 dials
11 pickups
 
2.1%
6-9pm
419 dials
9 pickups
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).
04

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
STOP · dial 124.24%1-37 pickups165 calls3.52%4-65 pickups142 calls3.60%7-94 pickups111 calls2.13%10-122 pickups94 calls0.35%13+2 pickups568 calls
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).