Australian B2B cold calling statistics (2026)

Most cold calling benchmarks quoted in Australia come from US research. These statistics come from Nousu Collective's own operating data: every dial, connection and booked meeting logged between November 2024 and April 2026, plus the Australian rules that govern B2B calling. Each statistic can be quoted with a link to this page.

Connect and conversation rates

• 14% of cold calls into Australian businesses reach a live person. US benchmarks typically cite 8% to 12%.
• 6% of dials become a conversation with an actual decision maker, not a gatekeeper.
• 22% of decision-maker conversations turn into a booked meeting.
• 1.3 meetings are booked per 100 dials, or about one meeting every 77 dials.
• 15 meetings a month is Nousu's benchmark for a full-time SDR.

Best times to call

• 10am to 11am local time is the peak window, with a 22% connect rate.
• 2pm to 3pm is the second peak, at 19%.
• 68% of qualified meetings come from those two windows.
• 9%: the connect rate over the 12pm to 1:30pm lunch dip.
• 5%: the connect rate after 5pm.
• Wednesday is the most productive day to call. Friday afternoon is effectively dead.

The hour-by-hour breakdown is in our guide to the best time to cold call in Australia.

Persistence and cadence

• 4 attempts, on average, to reach a decision maker.
• 58% of meetings are booked on the fourth attempt or later.
• 13% of meetings come from the first attempt, so stopping after one call forfeits 87% of pipeline.
• 72%: the share of pipeline forfeited by stopping after two attempts.
• 15%: how much less likely a contact is to be reached later after a voicemail on the first attempt.
• 8 touches over about 24 days: Nousu's standard cadence.

Phone vs email vs LinkedIn

• 77 cold calls per booked meeting, with 50% of those meetings becoming opportunities.
• 1,100 cold emails per booked meeting, with 32% becoming opportunities.
• 240 LinkedIn messages per booked meeting, with 41% becoming opportunities.
• 48 touches per meeting for a multi-channel sequence, with 47% becoming opportunities.
• 1.8% average cold email reply rate.
• 34% LinkedIn connection acceptance for personalised outreach to verified ICP contacts.
• 2x: a prospect who accepts a personalised LinkedIn connection request is about twice as likely to take a call from the same SDR within 30 days.

Onshore vs offshore calling

• 11 seconds: the median time for an Australian buyer to identify an offshore caller.
• 76% of about 800 reviewed offshore calls ended within 90 seconds.
• 84% of those offshore calls never reached a qualification question.
• 1.5% decision-maker conversation rate for offshore teams, against 6% onshore.
• 0.3 meetings per 100 dials offshore, against 1.3 onshore.
• $920: all-in cost per offshore-booked meeting, against $425 for Nousu's onshore team.
• 39% of offshore-booked meetings rated unqualified by client sales teams, against 13% onshore.

AI in outbound

• 16% connect rate for AI voice agents in testing, similar to humans, but under 1% decision-maker conversations.
• 0.6% reply rate for fully AI-generated email sequences, about a third of human-written cold email.
• 14%: the estimated lift in qualified conversation rate from AI account research before each call.
• 30%: the reduction in new SDR ramp time from AI call coaching.
• 22% more meetings per dial hour from AI-ranked call lists.
• Under 5% of the human-led meeting yield from two "autonomous SDR" platform pilots in 2025.

Cost

• $425: all-in cost per qualified meeting for Nousu's onshore team, covering SDR time, tools, management and data.
• $173,000: fully loaded year-one cost of an in-house Australian SDR.
• About $1,820 per meeting from an in-house SDR in year one, based on about 95 meetings.
• About $515 per meeting on Nousu's $7,000 Starter program: $85,000 in year one including the setup fee, for about 165 meetings.
• 47% of qualified meetings become sales opportunities.

Results by industry

Healthcare, government and consumer retail were excluded because cold outbound underperforms there.

The industry figures count only dials where we held a verified direct number for a named contact, which is why their connect and decision-maker conversation rates sit above the 14% and 6% all-dials averages, and why the conversations behind those rows convert to meetings at a lower rate than the 22% average measured across every conversation, including referrals and switchboard transfers.

Australian cold calling rules in numbers

• 9am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays: the permitted hours for telemarketing calls. No calls on Sundays or national public holidays.
• 30 days: how long a Do Not Call Register wash stays valid, and how long a caller ID callback number must keep working.
• $250,000: the maximum civil penalty a court can order against a company for each breach of the telemarketing industry standard.
• 5 working days: the deadline to action an email unsubscribe under the Spam Act 2003.

The full rules are set out in our guide to Australian cold calling laws.

Methodology

Source: Nousu Collective operating data, November 2024 to April 2026: 218,000+ dials into about 24,000 Australian companies, targeting director, VP, C-suite and founder-level buyers, placed by a 100% Australian SDR team based in Sydney. Every dial and outcome was logged in the dialler at the time and reconciled against CRM records monthly. These are Nousu performance benchmarks, not a representative sample of the whole market. Rules are sourced from the ACMA and the Do Not Call Register.

Full report: "Inside 200,000 Cold Calls".

How to cite: Nousu Collective (2026). Australian B2B cold calling statistics. https://www.nousucollective.com/blog/australian-cold-calling-statistics-2026

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of cold calls get answered in Australia? In Nousu's data from 218,000+ B2B dials, 14% of cold calls reach a live person and 6% reach an actual decision maker.

What is a good cold calling conversion rate? A well-run Australian B2B program books about 1.3 meetings per 100 dials, or one meeting every 77 dials. 22% of conversations with decision makers turn into a meeting.

How many calls does it take to book a meeting? About 77 dials per meeting on average, and an average of 4 attempts to reach each decision maker. 58% of meetings come on the fourth attempt or later.

Is cold calling still effective in Australia in 2026? Yes. In Nousu's data, the Australian connect rate (14%) is higher than typical US benchmarks (8% to 12%), and phone-sourced meetings become opportunities 50% of the time, against 32% for cold email.