A new survey of 153 sales managers and salespeople suggests that direct telephone outreach still holds an important place in B2B sales. Forty-seven percent of respondents called it an effective way to secure meetings, compared with only eight percent for personalized emails prepared with AI. The obstacles to calling remain a lack of skill and fear of rejection.
Automated customer outreach tools have expanded significantly in recent years, but a survey by ValueSelling Associates and Selling Power suggests that technological modernization alone has not changed the ranking of methods salespeople consider most effective. The research involved 153 sales leaders and salespeople from companies of different types and sizes. Some questions were also compared with a similar survey from 2018.
Referrals from existing customers ranked first, cited by 74 percent of respondents. Direct telephone outreach by a salesperson came second at 47 percent. Professional social networks received 40 percent and traditional email campaigns 24 percent. Personalized emails prepared with AI were considered effective by eight percent of respondents, and phone calls with live AI assistance by three percent.
These figures need to be read correctly. The study did not objectively measure conversion across all channels using a comparable customer sample. It captures the judgment of salespeople. Even so, the continuity is noteworthy: in 2018, 46 percent of respondents considered the phone effective; in 2026, the figure was 47 percent.
According to the research, the weakness therefore may not be the method itself but the ability to use it. Forty-six percent of managers said their salespeople give up on calling attempts too quickly, 40 percent see a problem with handling objections and 39 percent with fear of calling itself.
The gap in capability assessment is especially important. Only 19 percent of managers rate their team as excellent or very good at consistent telephone outreach. Among salespeople themselves, 43 percent give themselves the same rating. A similar gap appears in securing meetings with decision-makers.
Such a gap complicates development. A salesperson who considers their skill above average has little reason to change. Managers therefore need to spend less time debating self-assessment and more time working with observable behavior.
In telephone outreach, this can mean reviewing the first thirty seconds of a call, the reason for contact, the response to initial rejection, the ability to formulate a relevant question and the way the salesperson proposes the next step. Training then stops being a general lesson in “how to call” and becomes a response to a specific weakness in a specific person.
There is also an interesting difference in the perception of training itself. Eighty percent of managers say the company provides training in these skills, while half of salespeople say they do not receive it. This suggests that the existence of a course does not necessarily mean employees experience it as useful support for their work.
KEY TERMS
- Telephone outreach: Actively initiating contact with a prospective customer by phone.
- Sales persistence: The ability to continue systematic outreach despite rejection.
- Objection handling: A substantive response to customer concerns without ending the conversation prematurely.
- Self-assessment gap: The difference between how a salesperson rates a capability and how their manager assesses it.