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 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%). pour the fixes into getting more live conversations, the three levers below (dial the non-bookers by ~8 minutes, work 12-3pm, stop wasting dials past 12). Closing is already working.

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.

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).

When to stop dialing a lead

For leads still unreached, the chart plots the pickup rate per dial (share who finally answer) at each attempt depth.

WASTE

Dial 12 is the stop point. The pickup-per-dial rate holds 2-4% through 12 attempts, then falls off a cliff to 0.35%.

pickup rate per dial ↑higher = still worth calling

dial attempt depth →

90%

of pickups land by dial 12 (18 of 20)

leads dialed 12+ times & never answered

628

dials placed past dial 12 — 52% of all effort

pickups ever needed more than 12 (dial 21 and dial 43)

Half the dialing bought two pickups. 628 dials (52% of all effort) went past dial 12 and produced only 2 more pickups. hard-cap at 12 dials per lead, with a manual override only for a genuinely hot lead. Reinvest the reclaimed half into new leads and faster first-touch.

Study cross-reference Cadence research finds ~6 call attempts optimal, with 93% of eventual connects reached 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 dial 12), so a cap in the 6-12 range is well-supported.

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).

Where the effort went

Every lead and every dial, sorted into tiers around the dial-12 stop point.

WASTE

37 of 60 leads (62%) were dialed past 12 — and they soaked up 88% of all dialing.

The 60 leads

391137

The 1,212 dials

44961,072

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

Effort is upside-down. The productive 1-12 range and the 3 never-called leads got a thin slice of the effort, while the over-dialed 37 absorbed 88% of it for almost no pickups. enforce the 12-dial cap so no lead hogs the queue, immediately dial the 3 that got zero calls, and spread the freed time evenly across fresh leads.

Study cross-reference The recommended cadence is an even ~6 attempts per lead, not a few leads dialed into the ground; past ~7 calls prospects report feeling harassed and returns turn negative (Velocify, vendor data). Concentrating 88% of dials on 37 leads while 3 get zero is the opposite of that.

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).