Openers and objections: what is measured and what is opinion.
A few opening lines for cold calls have been measured on very large numbers of calls, and so has how often each kind of objection comes up. Which reply to an objection works best has not been measured by anyone we could find. This page separates the two, and puts the objections from our own calls next to the published ones.
- Saying why you call, early, is the one opener finding that holds across studies.
- The studies contradict each other on asking “is this a bad time?”. Test it on your own calls.
- On our calls the most common objection is “we have no need”, and price almost never comes up in a first call.
Which openers have been measured?
| Opening | Measured result | Source and sample |
|---|---|---|
| “How have you been?” | 10.01% of calls led to a meeting, against 1.5% for all calls | Gong, 2018, 90,380 cold calls |
| Stating the reason for the call | 2.1 times the average success rate | Gong, 2018 |
| “Did I catch you at a bad time?” | 0.9%, below the 1.5% average. In 2024: 2.15%, just above average | Gong, 2018 and 2024 |
| Naming similar customers, then asking if they have heard of you | 11.24%, the best of the 2024 study | Gong, 2024, over 300 million calls |
| Giving context, then asking for thirty seconds | 11.18% | Gong, 2024 |
| Any opener that asks permission | 13.9% of calls booked a meeting, against 5.8% without | Nooks, 2025, “thousands of calls” |
Where do the studies disagree?
- On “is this a bad time?”. Gong measures it as the weakest opener. Nooks counts the same sentence among the permission openers that book more than twice as often.
- On asking permission at all. Gong’s 2018 study warns against it. Its 2024 study puts a permission opener near the top, as long as the caller first says who they are and why they call.
- Inside one source. Nooks reports that permission openers win, and also that more than half of its best callers do not use one.
What survives: say early why you are calling, and do not open with a bare request for time. The rest you find out on your own calls.
Which objections come up most?
Published, on English-language calls: about half of all objections are a brush-off such as “not interested” or “send me some information”. Roughly four in ten are about the prospect’s situation, such as budget or timing. Only about 8% are “we already have a solution” (Gong, over 300 million calls). In another dataset “not interested” ended 30% of calls and “wrong person” 27% (Cognism with the agency WHAM, 55,701 dials).
On our own calls the order is different.
Two things stand out. “We already have a supplier” is about one in seven objections on our calls, twice its share in the large American dataset. And price came up once in 71: in a first call people decline the conversation, not the price.
What do you say back?
Here every source gives advice and none gives a measurement. The advice does agree on a pattern.
- We have no need
- Do not argue. Ask how they handle it today. The answer either confirms the no or opens the conversation.
- Not the decision-maker
- Ask who is, and for a direct number. Open the next call with the name of the person who referred you.
- Already a supplier
- Leave the supplier alone. Ask what they would still improve.
- Send me an email
- Say yes, ask what it should cover, and agree when you will call back about it.
- No time now
- Offer a moment. A callback that is agreed and kept is worth more than a rushed pitch.
We do not publish how often each reply works. On 71 objections that would be a guess.
Sources
- Gong Labs, cold call opening lines (2018, 90,380 calls).
- Gong Labs, the best and worst openers (2024).
- Gong Labs, the top objections (2024).
- Nooks, permission-based openers (2025) and how top callers open (2024).
- Cognism and WHAM, State of Cold Calling (2024).
These publishers sell calling software or contact data, and measured their own customers.
Written by Bright Match, from published studies and our own call reviews. Bright Match books qualified B2B meetings by phone, paid per meeting.