SHOTGUNThe cold call playbook, graded by its own evidence.
Seven moves from Gong Labs' cold-call research get quoted constantly. Four of them are backed by a published number. Three are not — and they're passed around with measured-sounding confidence anyway. Here's the honest version: every move kept, every claim labeled.
Why grade them at all
Because a rep who repeats a folklore statistic to a skeptical buyer loses the room, and never finds out which sentence did it. The tactics below are good — we run all seven. But a sound tactic and a measured result are different things, and only one of them survives being challenged. That distinction is also the entire product we sell, so it would be strange to be sloppy about it here.
The seven moves
In the order they fire on a live call.
“How've you been?”
Measured10.01% success rate against a 1.5% baseline — 6.6×, the top-performing opener across 90,380 first-touch cold calls.
It isn't working because they know you. It works because it interrupts the pattern every other caller runs. The prospect's brain spends half a second trying to place you, and that half-second is the mechanism. Say it warm, say it confident, then keep moving — don't stall in the gap and don't explain yourself.
Your full name and your company
GuidanceGong's rationale: a full name reads as important and formal, while a mumbled first name signals you already expect to be hung up on. Announce yourself like the call matters.
There is no published lift number for this one. It's a well-argued convention, not a measured result. Every version of this list we've seen presents it as coming from the same dataset as move 01. It doesn't.
“The reason for my call is this…”
Measured2.1× higher success rate when the rep states the reason up front. Brains want a why before they grant attention.
The inverse is the more useful number. “Did I catch you at a bad time?” books at 0.9% — roughly 40% worse than baseline. It's the most common opener in the industry and it's a self-inflicted wound: you hand the prospect a scripted exit before you've given them a reason to stay. Never ask permission to exist.
Sell the meeting, not the product
GuidanceA cold call and a discovery call are different instruments. Gong's guidance is to save “what are your top strategic priorities this year” until after the meeting is locked, and to spend the cold call earning fifteen minutes instead of retailing the product in minute two.
The popular framing — “discovery questions tank cold calls” — is not what the data says. Across the same 90,380 calls, Gong found no statistical link between question count and outcome. Type and sequencing carry the weight; volume doesn't. The related figure that is measured: reps talk about 55% of the time on successful cold calls — you carry it, unlike discovery.
Invite the interruption — and mean it
MeasuredSuccessful cold calls contain 77% more speaker switches per minute than unsuccessful ones. Not longer speeches — more handoffs.
The sharper cut: the average prospect monologue runs 3.5 seconds on calls that succeed and 8 seconds on calls that fail. A prospect talking for eight uninterrupted seconds is usually delivering a brush-off, not engaging. Monologues read as a pitch; ping-pong reads as peers.
Two adjacent freebies from the same corpus: winning calls use a 35% higher we/I ratio and a 55% higher our/my ratio, and the best-performing windows are 11am–12pm and 4–5pm, Wednesday and Thursday.
Give next steps real airtime
MeasuredIn Gong's most successful cold calls, next steps consumed roughly half the conversation — not a rushed sentence at the end. Those calls also ran nearly 2× longer overall: about 5:50 against 3:14.
Deals don't die from a bad pitch. They die in the fog after a good one. Protect the runway, name owners and dates out loud, and end with the next call already real.
“Do you have your calendar handy?”
GuidanceDirect, assumptive, and hard to deflect without surfacing a real objection. Not “I'll send some times.” Not “let me know.” Those are where meetings go to die. Then stop talking — same discipline as after you state a price.
This is Gong's recommended close. It circulates as “the single best closing move they've measured,” and that attribution has no published figure behind it. Use the phrase because it's good. Don't cite it as a result.
All seven, assembled
Ninety seconds, first ring to booked. The parenthetical marks which move is firing.
The move this list can't teach you
Every one of these seven is about the first ninety seconds. None of them survives minute eleven of the meeting they book — the moment a buyer asks something specific and your rep says “let me check and get back to you.”
What the cold call wins you
- Fifteen minutes on a calendar
- A prospect who is curious, not sold
- Exactly one chance to answer well
What Shotgun does with it
- The right answer, out loud, in about two seconds
- Blocked in code from quoting a price you never documented
- Every claim signed and verifiable by the buyer afterward
Be the smartest verified person in the room, not the most confident unverified person in the room.
— the rule this page was written under, and the one Shotgun runs onSources
Every number above traces to one of these. We verified each against the primary Gong source on 29 July 2026 — Gong periodically refreshes these posts with new corpus cuts, so re-check before republishing.
17 Cold Calling Techniques
6.6× / 10.01%, the 0.9% figure, 2.1×, 77% speaker switches, 3.5s vs 8s monologues, we/I and our/my ratios, best call windows.
Cold Call Opening Lines
The 90,380-call opener study and the 1.5% baseline it is measured against.
How to Cold Call
Sell-the-meeting framing, 55% rep talk time, the no-link-between-question-count finding, and the calendar-handy close.
9 Secret Elements of Cold Calls
Next steps as a share of the conversation, and the 5:50 vs 3:14 call-length split.
Gong is an independent company with no affiliation to Shotgun or Deep AI Solutions. Research cited under fair use; all figures are theirs, all grading is ours.