Free tool
Work out how many cold calls it takes to book a meeting. Enter your dials and funnel rates to see meetings per dial, dials per meeting and the stage holding you back, benchmarked against 218,000+ dials into Australian businesses. It runs in your browser, and nothing you enter is stored or sent.
Quick answer
Results update as you type. Start from the Nousu benchmark or an industry preset, then change any number to your own.
1.32
Meetings booked per 100 dials
75.5
Dials per meeting booked
26.5
Meetings booked per month
21.2
Meetings held per month
Bars use a log scale so the smaller stages stay visible next to dials.
| Stage | Per day | Per week | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dials | 100 | 500 | 2,000 |
| Connects | 14 | 70 | 280 |
| Conversations | 6 | 30.1 | 120.4 |
| Meetings booked | 1.3 | 6.6 | 26.5 |
| Meetings held | 1.1 | 5.3 | 21.2 |
A week is five calling days. Hours on the phone: 4 per SDR per day, 80 a month across the team, at 25 dials an hour.
10.6 opportunities a month at a 50% opportunity rate. Add an average deal value to see pipeline and revenue.
Each stage compared with Nousu's published figures from 218,000+ dials into Australian businesses. The benchmark is 1.3 meetings per 100 dials, against 0.3 for offshore teams. You are at 1.32, around benchmark.
No stage is clearly below benchmark. Your weakest stage is connect rate, and your biggest lever is +5 points connect rate (9.5 more meetings booked a month).
| Stage | You | Nousu benchmark | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connect rate | 14% | 14% of dials | Around benchmark |
| Conversation rate | 43% | About 43% of connects (6% of dials) | Around benchmark |
| Meeting rate | 22% | 22% of conversations | Around benchmark |
| Show rate | 80% | 75% to 85% of booked meetings | Around benchmark |
| Opportunity rate (after the meeting) | 50% | 50% of meetings | Around benchmark |
+5 points connect rate (to 19%)
9.5 more meetings booked a month and 7.6 more held, from the same dials.
+5 points conversation rate (to 48%)
3.1 more meetings booked a month and 2.5 more held, from the same dials.
+2 points meeting rate (to 24%)
2.4 more meetings booked a month and 1.9 more held, from the same dials.
Five minutes with your dialler or CRM report is enough.
Every number in the calculator comes from one of these formulas. Benchmarks are Nousu's published figures; anything else is labelled as a starting assumption.
| Metric | Formula | Nousu benchmark or default |
|---|---|---|
| Dials per month | Dials per SDR per day x SDRs x working days | Your activity. 100 dials a day is a typical starting assumption, change it to yours. |
| Connect rate | Connects ÷ dials | 14% of dials reach a live person |
| Conversation rate | Conversations with the right person ÷ connects | 6% of dials, which is about 43% of connects |
| Meeting rate | Meetings booked ÷ conversations | 22% of decision-maker conversations |
| Show rate | Meetings held ÷ meetings booked | 75% to 85% for a well run program |
| Meetings per 100 dials | Connect rate x conversation rate x meeting rate x 100 | 1.3 meetings per 100 dials, against 0.3 for offshore teams |
| Dials per meeting | 100 ÷ meetings per 100 dials | About 77 dials per meeting |
| Opportunity rate | Opportunities ÷ meetings held | 50% of phone-sourced meetings become opportunities |
| Hours on the phone | Dials ÷ dials per hour | 25 dials an hour is a typical starting assumption, change it to yours |
Connects are dials answered by a live person. Conversations are connects that reach the right person and run past the opener, rather than a gatekeeper or a brush off. Meetings booked are agreed and in the calendar. Meetings held actually took place with the right person.
The conversation benchmark is worked out from two published figures: 14% of dials connect and 6% of dials reach a decision maker, so 6 of every 14 connects, about 43%, become a conversation.
One SDR, 100 dials a day, 20 working days, at the Nousu benchmark rates.
In the same example, lifting the connect rate by 5 points to 19% adds about 9.5 meetings booked a month from the same 2,000 dials. Lifting the conversation rate by 5 points adds about 3.1, and lifting the meeting rate by 2 points adds about 2.4. That is why the list and call timing are usually the first place to look.
The short answer is about 77 dials. The useful answer is in the stages behind that number.
Most cold calling benchmarks quoted in Australia come from overseas research. The figures on this page come from Nousu Collective's own operating data: 218,000+ dials into about 24,000 Australian companies between November 2024 and April 2026, targeting director, VP, C-suite and founder-level buyers.
Across those dials, 14% reached a live person, 6% became a conversation with an actual decision maker, and 22% of those conversations turned into a booked meeting. Multiply the stages together and you get 1.3 meetings per 100 dials, or about one meeting every 77 dials.
Volume alone does not get you there. It takes 4 attempts on average to reach a decision maker, and 58% of meetings are booked on the fourth attempt or later. Only 13% of meetings come from the first attempt, so stopping after one call forfeits 87% of the pipeline. Nousu's standard cadence is 8 touches over about 24 days.
Timing matters as much as persistence. 10am to 11am local time is the peak window at a 22% connect rate, with 2pm to 3pm second at 19%, and 68% of qualified meetings come from those two windows. Over the 12pm to 1:30pm lunch dip the connect rate falls to 9%, and after 5pm to 5%. Wednesday is the most productive day to call.
The full breakdown is in our Australian cold calling statistics and the hour-by-hour guide to the best time to cold call in Australia.
Nousu's all-dials averages from 218,000+ dials into Australian businesses.
See the full statisticsOf dials reach a live person
Of dials become a conversation with a decision maker
Of decision-maker conversations book a meeting
Meetings per 100 dials, onshore vs offshore
| Industry | Connect rate | Decision-maker conversation rate | Meetings per 100 dials | Meeting to opportunity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sustainability and ESG | 26% | 14% | 1.9 | 44% |
| Professional services | 23% | 12% | 1.5 | 52% |
| AI and ML vendors | 22% | 11% | 1.6 | 38% |
| Energy and utilities | 20% | 9% | 1.3 | 48% |
| SaaS | 19% | 9% | 1.4 | 45% |
| Industrial | 18% | 8% | 1.2 | 55% |
| Logistics | 17% | 8% | 1.1 | 46% |
| Fintech | 15% | 7% | 1.1 | 49% |
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. Healthcare, government and consumer retail were excluded because cold outbound underperforms there.
For booked meetings, Nousu's published show rate for a well run program is 75% to 85%, and phone-sourced meetings become sales opportunities 50% of the time, against 32% for cold email. Most Nousu campaigns book about 8 qualified meetings a month once running, within a range of 6 to 20.
Each stage has a different cause and a different fix. Diagnose the stage, not the whole program.
If every stage is healthy and meetings are still low, the problem is volume: add calling hours or expand the list. For openers that earn the next minute, see the best cold call opener for booking a B2B meeting, or build a structured script with the free cold call script generator.
Who makes the calls changes every stage of the funnel.
Onshore vs offshore comparedIn Nousu's data, Australian callers book 1.3 meetings per 100 dials, against 0.3 for offshore teams. Offshore teams reach a decision maker on 1.5% of dials, against 6% onshore, and 39% of offshore-booked meetings were rated unqualified by client sales teams, against 13% onshore.
The median time for an Australian buyer to identify an offshore caller is 11 seconds. If you are benchmarking an offshore program, set the 0.3 figure as your comparison point rather than 1.3.
They answer different questions.
Starts from your dial activity and funnel rates and works forward to meetings booked and held. It benchmarks each stage, names the biggest bottleneck and shows what a lift at each stage is worth. The reverse view solves only the daily dials for a meeting target.
Starts from a revenue target and works backwards to the pipeline, meetings, calls, emails and LinkedIn touches you need, with scenarios. Use it for full quota planning.
Open the pipeline calculatorTo turn meetings into revenue and compare it with the cost of outbound, use the ROI calculator. If you would rather have the calls made for you, our cold calling service uses Australian callers who work in-house in Sydney, starting at $7,000 a month.
Benchmarks come from Nousu Collective operating data, November 2024 to April 2026: 218,000+ dials into about 24,000 Australian companies, placed by a 100% Australian SDR team. 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.
The show rate range comes from our appointment setting benchmarks. Dials per day, dials per hour, win rate and the IT and MSP preset are typical starting assumptions, not benchmarks. Results are estimates based on the numbers you enter, not a guarantee.
Full report: Inside 200,000 cold calls.
FAQ
Cold call conversion rates, benchmarks and how the calculator works.
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