When it comes to strategizing for outbound, many new SDR teams get excited about what’s worked recently instead of what works best. If this sounds familiar, you might know what we mean:

“I booked two meetings today at noon, that must be the best time to call.”

“I had four conversations on Friday, Fridays are the best days to call.”

“I just turned on the local presence and got a few pickups, everyone should do this now!” 

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In the world of Sales Development, so many reps are yearning for results and looking for any edge to help them get to quota - so it makes sense why one might develop a taste for a quick fix. 

In this article, we’ll explore whether or not local presence works using Nooks proprietary dial data and also external sources, if it’s the best choice for your team, and other ways to drive connect/conversion rates.

‍What does Nooks Dial Data show?

As of the time of this writing in Fall of 2023, analysis on 1.5M dials from customers using the Nooks AI-powered dialer shows little to no correlation between using local presence and increased connect rates. 

We ran our customer call dispositions against whether or not the dialing area code matched the recipients area code and found no significant impact across multiple data sets. 

‍Disclaimer: Most Nooks customers are selling B2B and typically calling during business hours. Our data may not accurately be representative for B2C and other types of selling. 

What are other sources saying? 

According to a survey by Softwareadvice.com from 2017, people were four times more likely to answer calls from local numbers at the time of writing - but nearly half of those surveyed said they would hang up once they realize it's not actually a local call and 20% said they would ask for an explanation. 

Anecdotally, the SDR team at Nooks and our customers are reporting that the customers of today are keen on local presence dialing and are often met with frustrated prospects when they connect with someone who’s expecting a call from their area code.

It could be the case that the customer marketplace post-2020 is more likely to mistrust a number with their area code as they’ve been answering more calls than ever from local presence dialers since the shift to calling most mobile numbers. 

We did find a few sources boasting that local presence significantly increases connect rates, but nearly all of them were pre-2020 or published by companies that sell local presence tools. So take your sales advice with a grain of salt.

Ways to increase connect rates and conversions

1. Leave strong voicemails

For B2B selling, Nooks data is showing with confidence that leaving voicemails increases connect rate on the second call by up to 25% and on the third call by up to 20%.

While we don’t have accurate data on voicemail strength, we highly recommend leaving well-researched messages citing a business case on why the prospect should be interested in your value proposition. 

2. Great calling starts with great prospecting 

The best way to ensure that your call sessions have a great connect rate and encourage your team to stay on the phone is by encouraging a smart prospecting strategy. 

The old days of mass importing lists and calling by the hundreds is sure to burn time and resources as prospects become harder to reach (see this report by The Bridge Group).

Some of the strategies we’ve discussed with Sales leaders, like our webinar with Zilla Security and Abnormal Security, include doing research on target accounts, calling individual contributors to collect information and taking a very targeted approach to calling decision makers. 

3. Have your team ready with battle cards

When calling with Nooks, managers can arm their reps with real-time battle cards tailored to sequences, accounts and job titles so they can be ready with the information they need to maximize every conversation. 

As a result, connect rates increase as prospects are more likely to accept a conversation during follow-up days after a value-driven first call. 

4. Use parallel dialing to maximize your call blocks

Using a parallel dialer like Nooks drives call productivity by allowing your reps to call 5 lines at a time and immediately connect to the first prospect who answers. Using well-built lists and some of the other tactics above, teams are 3x-ing meetings booked, increasing connect-rates by automatically removing bad numbers and driving team morale by creating highly productive call blocks.