Novel insights and B2B cold calling benchmarks you can't find anywhere else, built on data from +5.8m dials.
It's worse than bad. It’ll cut your connect rate in half compared to using a single-line dialer, then cut conversion-to-meeting rate in half too. Reps who used parallel dialers placed 19x more of their calls from numbers the carriers had already flagged as spam. If you ever doubted that volume is vanity and precision is the only path to outbound growth, this report is proof.
For this study, we pulled the raw call logs from 51 outbound sales teams at 50 B2B companies. Our analysis covers 3,526,355 dials, 194,640 connects, and 12,989 meetings booked and digs deep into what happens when reps use parallel dialers and why they hurt more than they help.
We scored 2,305,366 B2B contact records that TitanX customers submitted between October 2025 and October 2026. Only about 15% (15.68%) scored High Intent (P1) for Phone Intent™: their number was verified as theirs, and they showed a strong habit of answering cold calls. That share doesn't change over time. Even the best of the 10 data vendors delivered only about one in five (21.84%).
Leaders were 22% less likely to answer than managers and individual contributors, and contacts in some industries were 48% more likely to answer than others. The full report breaks the numbers down by vendor, seniority, and industry, with a playbook for working a scored list.
Most contacts on any list won't answer a cold call, whatever the source, title, or industry. Across 2,305,366 records, 15.68% of contacts scored High Intent (P1): their number was verified as theirs, and they showed a strong habit of answering cold calls. 18.18% scored P2, 50.59% P3, and 15.55% Bad Data. We found that same four-way split in the records from every one of the 10 vendors, in every title band, and in every one of the 21 industries we looked at.
There is no industry, seniority level, job title, function, or data vendor where more than 23% of the market consistently scored P1. It doesn't change over time either: from November 2025 through October 2026, between 13.08% and 18.18% of contacts scored P1 each month, with no trend up or down.
Shares of scored records, not measured pickup rates. 2,305,366 records scored by TitanX customers, October 2025–October 2026. The monthly trend leaves out October 2025, a ramp-up month.
Source: TitanX Phone Intent™ scoring data (Titan and Enrich + Titan models), Oct 2025–Oct 2026.
Across all vendors, 13.76% of C-level records scored P1, along with 13.32% of VP and 13.79% of Director records, compared with 17.59% of manager and 17.24% of staff or IC records. Leaders (directors, VPs and C-level) cluster around 13.63% P1, and managers and individual contributors around 17.41%. P2 had the opposite trend: it's much easier to confirm a phone number belongs to the right leader.
Low propensity to answer is not a reason to stop calling executives. 13.76% of C-level records scored P1, and the data set we analyzed had a total of 94,000 high-intent (P1) C-level or VP leaders. Instead, use Phone Intent™ scores to inform who you reach out to and when. If an executive at a target account scores P1, your rep can call them, so they are selling from the top, from their very first dial. If no executive scores P1, but managers or operators on their team do, your reps can call those people to gather intel and find a referral path to the decision-maker.
22% = relative gap in P1 share, leaders (Director, VP and C-level) vs managers and individual contributors (Manager and Staff or IC), pooled by record count. Shares of scored records, not measured pickup rates. Title labels are normalized; we set aside the 24.41% of records whose title labels were too vague to use.
Source: TitanX Phone Intent™ scoring data (Titan and Enrich + Titan models), Oct 2025–Oct 2026.
18.96% of Construction contacts scored P1, vs 12.81% at Hospitals and Physicians Clinics, the lowest of 21 industries. Software ranked 16th, at 14.29%.
Shares of scored records, not measured pickup rates. Industry view built on 1,822,288 records across 21 industries with at least 1,000 records each, Oct 2025–Oct 2026. Industry labels are normalized.
Source: TitanX Phone Intent™ scoring data (Titan and Enrich + Titan models), Oct 2025–Oct 2026.
We compared a set of 154 reps at 19 companies against themselves: the same people, working the same lists, dialing both ways. We even removed dials placed from spam-flagged numbers to make sure it wouldn’t skew results.
On a power or single-line dialer, reps reached a live person on an average of 10.12% of their dials. On a parallel dialer, it was 4.98%.
154 reps at 19 companies who dialed both ways. Dials from spam-flagged numbers removed on both sides.
Source: raw call logs from 51 outbound sales teams at 50 B2B companies (3,526,355 dials, 194,640 connects, 12,989 meetings).
We sorted reps into six groups by how much of their dialing was in parallel mode. Only the reps who never parallel dialed escaped negative effects on their connect rate, reach and conversion rate: they got an average of 84 connects per 1,000 dials.
Even light use hurts. Reps who did 1–20% of their dialing in parallel fell to 75 connects per 1,000 dials, and their meeting rate dropped from 1.03% to 0.51%. Reps who parallel dialed almost exclusively fell to 45.
Share of each rep’s dialing that was parallel. Each group includes reps from 10 to 17 teams.
Source: raw call logs from 51 outbound sales teams at 50 B2B companies (3,526,355 dials, 194,640 connects, 12,989 meetings).
Carriers have a score for every number you use to parallel dial, even before you call a prospect. They look for bursts of calls from one number, lots of very short calls, and low answer rates. That's almost a word-for-word description of how a parallel dialer works.
Parallel reps placed 27.38% of their dials from spam-flagged numbers. Power and single-line reps placed just 1.47% from bad numbers.
Median rep, reps with 500+ dials. Team view: the 34 teams with caller-ID data and 5,000+ dials.
Source: raw call logs from 51 outbound sales teams at 50 B2B companies (3,526,355 dials, 194,640 connects, 12,989 meetings).
Getting someone on the phone only matters if the conversation turns into something. Power and single-line reps turned 7.44% of their connections into meetings. Parallel reps booked meetings from just 3.88% of their connections.
With a parallel dialer, the rep finds out who answered at the same moment the prospect is hearing silence. Your rep got the conversation and wasn't ready for it.
Median rep, reps with 500+ dials: 98 power or single-line reps and 52 parallel reps.
Source: raw call logs from 51 outbound sales teams at 50 B2B companies (3,526,355 dials, 194,640 connects, 12,989 meetings).
Reach is the share of prospects a rep ever connects with. The typical power or single-line rep reached 17.09% of their prospects. The typical parallel rep reached 10.33%.
Put another way, power dialing reps reach 1.7x more prospects than reps who use parallel dialers.
Reach = share of prospects ever connected with. Median rep, reps with 500+ dials. Reach by parallel share: each group includes reps from 10 to 17 teams.
Source: raw call logs from 51 outbound sales teams at 50 B2B companies (3,526,355 dials, 194,640 connects, 12,989 meetings).
You’re not a knockout artist. It takes multiple attempts to reach a prospect, over several days. About 94% of all connects came from the first five attempts.
But nearly half of reps averaged fewer than 2.5 calls per prospect: they gave up too early and called new prospects too much.
Average calls per prospect, 1,215 rep records. Connect rate by attempt: attempts on different days; same-day repeats excluded. 2,809,160 dials.
Source: raw call logs from 51 outbound sales teams at 50 B2B companies (3,526,355 dials, 194,640 connects, 12,989 meetings).
The Arena is where we at TitanX publish in-depth, original research on cold calling, B2B outbound, and dialer technology. Reports take the form of benchmark reports, studies addressing commonly discussed questions, rising trends in B2B outbound, market analysis, and more. In each report, we show you the data behind findings and what they mean for how your team dials.
We build every finding from a research methodology suited to the kinds of questions we want to answer. Depending on the report, we use anonymized TitanX Phone Intent™ scoring run results, call logs from other dialers given to us by prospects and customers, usage behaviors and results from the TitanX Precision Dialer app, and surveys. The 2026 Phone Intent Benchmark, for example, covers 2,305,366 records scored between October 2025 and October 2026. We anonymize every company, rep, and data vendor.
We aim to publish a new report at least once a quarter, and to include more longitudinal or trend-analysis reports in the future as we gather more historical data. The 2026 Phone Intent Benchmark now covers 12 months of scoring data. Sign up for new Arena reports and we'll email you when the next one goes live.
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