When your sales representatives are buried in prospecting calls instead of focusing on qualified opportunities, it may be time to outsource cold calling services.
Outsourcing gives your startup or SMB access to experienced callers while freeing your internal team to focus on high-value activities. It helps you scale sales faster – often more cost-effectively – than hiring additional in-house staff.
In this article, you’ll learn how to choose the right cold calling provider. You’ll be able to identify the right service for your business needs, the challenges to consider and how to integrate external cold calling into your sales process.
Key takeaways for how to outsource cold calling services
Outsourcing cold calling services involves hiring an external company to generate leads for you through cold calls.
Successful cold calling helps you scale your sales team faster and more affordably.
External cold calling risks reducing your control over messaging and brand voice.
Pipedrive helps you keep track of your external cold calling processes – try it free for 14 days.
What does it mean to outsource cold calling services?
Outsourcing cold calling services involves hiring an external company to make sales phone calls on your behalf.
Essentially, your business engages agents to conduct sales prospect outreach while your in-house sales team focuses on closing deals.
The main difference between external and internal cold calling is the responsibilities. For external teams, you don’t need to manage cold callers directly. The cold calling company handles hiring, training and quality control for you.
Here’s how cold calling campaigns look in practice:
You provide your ideal customer profile, talking points and cold calling scripts
The outsourcing company assigns and trains a dedicated team
Callers kickstart the outreach process with your prospective leads
You get regular reports on outbound call volume, lead quality and customer conversion rates
Any qualified leads get passed down to your internal sales team
Your salespeople receive notes on each conversation so they can follow up with context from previous discussions. The handoff process can vary according to the calling services you’re paying for.
For example, lead generation services focus on finding the right prospects. Cold callers make the initial contact and qualify using basic criteria (e.g., budget and timeline). The outcome is a list of hot leads to pursue.
Appointment-setting services take this process a step further. They reach out to prospects and set appointments for your sales teams. As a result, you get a calendar with booked appointments.
Direct sales services try to finalize the deal over the phone. Callers have more authority to negotiate and handle objections. In other words, you get closed deals, not leads.
Cold calling vs. telemarketing: what’s the difference?
The main distinction here is the sales focus.
Cold calling typically focuses on B2B selling, so it’s more consultative and relationship-driven. That’s why you need a professional sales team to reach out to prospects.
Telemarketing is broader and covers both B2B and B2C. It includes robocalls, automated messages and mass outreach, so it’s often more scripted, volume-driven and transactional.
Companies could outsource B2C cold calling services for consumer campaigns. For instance, an insurance company might hire cold callers to contact consumers about auto coverage options.
On the other hand, businesses could use B2B telemarketing for lead generation. A payroll service, for instance, might use automated calls to reach HR departments about switching providers.
Pros and cons of outsourcing cold calling services
While cold calling outsourcing services sounds like an easy way of scaling your sales prospecting without the hiring process, it also has a few downsides.
Here’s a list of outsourcing pros and cons side by side to help you understand what can work for your small or medium-sized business (SMB):
Pros | Cons |
Cost-effective
| Less control over brand representation
|
Access to experienced professionals
| Potential high-quality leads issues
|
Better scalability and faster results
| Dependency on the outsourcing company (or call center)
|
The internal team focuses on closing
| Limited in-depth product knowledge
|
If you’re unsure whether to hire an internal team or outsource services, here are some early signs you may need to outsource B2B cold calling services.
When should you outsource cold calling services?
Outsource cold calling when your prospecting efforts constantly underperform, whether this means you’re not generating enough leads or need more calling capacity fast.
According to the State of Cold Calling in 2025 from Cognism, generating leads through cold calls has become more complex in the last year. Cold calling success rates dropped from 4.82% in 2024 to just 2.3% in 2025 (almost half in just one year).
Your internal team may need to work twice as hard to achieve the same results, making outsourcing more valuable than ever.
Here are the specific warning signs that you should outsource cold calling:
“Closers” spend time prospecting instead of closing deals. Your account managers spend hours in low-level activities (e.g., cold calls or filling contact lists) when they should be negotiating sales, sending quotes or having sales conversations with qualified leads.
Prospecting numbers consistently fall short. Your SDRs (sales development representatives) struggle to meet the minimum target. You may miss your sales goals because the top of your sales funnel is slow, and internal sales training and coaching aren’t fast enough.
Need for more calling capacity immediately. You may be launching new products or entering new markets. Hiring and training SDRs takes time, so you need experienced callers to capture sales opportunities within weeks.
On the other hand, outsourcing cold calling might not be right for every company. Here are some of the reasons this service may not be beneficial to you:
Need for product knowledge in the first call. Your prospects expect technical explanations, sales demos or compliance management know-how. External callers often lack deep product expertise to move buyers forward – a common issue with enterprise software or medical and pharmaceutical systems.
The internal team has untapped capacity. You have experienced SDRs that understand your market and hit their targets, but don’t work at full capacity. In this case, you can increase their sales quotas or territories. They’re already successful, so you don’t need external effort.
Small niche or market targeting. Your addressable market is small, with prospects who probably know each other. Customer relationships and reputation matter more than volume, so use internal callers who fully understand your brand and product.
The decision to outsource a cold calling team or hire one internally depends on your business’s specific needs.
You may need an internal team if you’re one of many small B2B companies with a complex product. If you’re scaling your business quickly or need to disrupt new markets, outsourcing may be more beneficial in the beginning.
How to choose the best cold calling service provider
Choosing the right cold calling provider can be a challenge. Besides asking the right questions and keeping an eye on contract terms, you must look out for red flags before committing.
Here’s how to navigate any potential issues before they happen.
Essential questions to ask potential providers
To separate professional providers from amateur operations, ask questions on performance metrics, training processes and ongoing reporting.
Start by testing if they track meaningful data. Many providers make vague claims about “great results” without backing them up with specific metrics.
Q (You): “What’s your average conversion rate in [industry] over the last [period of time]?”
A (Them): “For mid-market B2B SaaS like yours, we see 3–5% connection rates. We qualify 20% of those connections into appointments. However, real estate performs differently due to longer sales cycles”.
This answer shows they track key sales KPIs. The connection rates are how often prospects pick up the phone and converse with the caller. They’re giving you specific measures in each step.
The B2B cold calling agency Martal Group does a great job of providing some of its metrics and results upfront:
Next, you can address the outsourcing risk of callers who don’t understand your product.
Q (You): “How would you train your callers on [your product]?
A (Them): “We start with a two-week onboarding to grasp your sales process. It includes product training sessions, role-playing common objections and shadowing your internal team. We also want to understand your buyer persona and customer journey”.
Good providers invest serious time in learning about your business. They’ll want to talk to your team and understand your company.
A good example is the LevelUp Leads agency’s process:
LevelUp Leads wants to ensure it understands your ideal customer profile. It gives you a sample list to confirm that the contacts match your criteria and builds a strategy around that.
Finally, you want to ensure ongoing transparency and control.
Q (You): “What reporting will I receive, and how do you monitor call quality?”
A (Them): “You’ll get weekly reports on call volume, connection rates and lead quality. We record calls for review and provide conversation notes from every qualified prospect. Our managers monitor calls daily and sometimes in real time”.
Professional providers focus on transparency. They want to improve consistently so they can better their relationship with you instead of operating in black boxes.
Here’s an example of what comprehensive reporting looks like from Belkins, another B2B cold calling agency:
The reports show detailed call tracking and easy-to-understand performance dashboards.
Asking these three basic questions will help you evaluate cold calling providers properly – here’s a handy checklist for quick reference:
Cold calling vendor Q&A checklist:
What’s your average conversion rate in [industry] over the last [period of time]?
How would you train your callers on [your product]?
What reporting will I receive, and how do you monitor call quality?
Providers who answer with specific examples and data-driven evidence typically deliver better results than those who give vague promises.
Pricing models and contract considerations
Every provider has different pricing models and contract considerations. Here are the most common models you’ll encounter:
Per-hour pricing – you pay for the calling time, which works when doing market research or testing messaging
Per-lead pricing – providers get paid when they deliver prospects meeting your criteria, which brings you more high-quality leads
Monthly retainer – services come bundled into fixed monthly fees that provide predictable costs for ongoing campaigns
Ask for the provider’s minimum commitments, such as X number of connections or Y leads a month.
Cold calling campaigns can take weeks or even months to start producing meaningful results. Minimum commitments keep you engaged long enough to see real performance.
Ask your provider if they have any free trial periods. Smart providers offer these to reduce your risk and prove their worth.
Note: For companies that offer performance guarantees, ask what happens if they don’t meet expectations before signing any agreement. Without clear terms up front, you could end up paying for weeks of poor performance.
Red flags to watch for during vetting
The biggest warning sign is a provider who promises everything without proof to back it up. Professional cold calling services should highlight results through evidence.
Here are three red flags to watch out for:
Promising unrealistic results. Be cautious of companies that guarantee dubious performance numbers (e.g., 20% conversion rates). Providers should know that results depend on your market, competition and internal follow-up processes.
Refusal to provide case studies or references. Legitimate providers should be able to give examples of their work. If they can’t share results because of confidentiality, it may mean they haven’t been in the business long enough to build a track record.
Claiming that they can serve any industry. Cold calling providers understand industry-specific sales cycles and decision-making processes. A provider claiming equal expertise in all sectors may lack specific in-depth knowledge in one.
Red flags often appear together. For example, a provider with unrealistic promises usually can’t give you proof. It may even target every possible client to compensate for the lack of results. Watch out for these early signs.
How to make outsourced cold calling work for your business
The key to making outsourcing work for your business is to treat your external team as an extension of your internal team.
While finding the right cold calling provider is a critical step, you must still actively manage the actual cold calling process. Here are some challenges and action steps you can take:
Challenge | Solution |
Maintaining brand consistency External providers risk diluting your brand voice. Prospects may notice when untrained callers use inconsistent messaging, harming your credibility and conversion rate potential. |
|
Monitoring quality You may not know if callers follow your guidelines or represent your brand correctly. You can only detect poor calls when prospects start complaining. |
|
Measuring ROI from outsourcing services Surface metrics like call volume or total leads don’t tell you if outsourcing is improving your bottom line. You might be paying for a low-quality activity that doesn’t generate sales revenue. |
|
Preparing your team and processes for handoffs External callers may pass prospects to your team without context. This means your team has to start conversations from scratch, which frustrates prospects. |
|
The above challenges are predictable and preventable. Companies that address them have better results than those that treat outsourcing as a “set it and forget it” process.
How to integrate outsourced calling with Pipedrive
Pipedrive’s sales-focused customer relationship management (CRM) software can help you track and manage your outsourced cold calling efforts from first contact to close.
Here’s how to integrate Pipedrive into your outsourcing processes.
Set permissions for controlled access
You can grant the cold calling company access to your CRM by setting permissions in Pipedrive that allow them to add deals and their information. Your internal team can then check the deals and follow up.
Go to Manage users > Permission sets to find your existing settings and data.
Click on “+ Permission set” and then on “New Deals set”.
Check which actions you want users under this set to perform. For example, you can allow cold callers to “Add deals”, then turn everything else off.
When cold callers want to pass a lead to your team, they’ll simply need to log in to Pipedrive, create a deal and enter the necessary information. They can include contact information (e.g., name, company, email, etc.), notes and attachments.
Note: You can also opt to obtain this information directly from the outsourcing company and have your team enter it in Pipedrive.
In the Manage users > Users and access tab, Pipedrive highlights the potential revenue you could win by reviving deals currently assigned to deactivated users.
Watch this space to spot potential sales opportunities alongside your cold calling outsourcing efforts.
Track attribution with source fields
To better track where your deals are coming from, specifically if they’re coming from the cold calling company, set them as an option in the Source field.
To do this, go to Company Settings > Data fields.
In the options, just type “cold calling efforts”, “cold calling strategy” or “cold calling company”.
If you added users from the cold calling company from the previous step, they’ll be able to select the correct source field when creating the deal.
Monitor performance through reporting
Pipedrive’s reporting feature lets you easily track conversion rates and revenue by lead source.
Go to Insights > + Report > Lead to create a lead report.
Choose between two types of reports: performance (for leads you created or converted) and conversion (the rate at which leads convert to deals).
To check the lead source, select performance and click on “Continue”.
In the report, you can choose what graphic you’d like to see your lead information in. Pick from bar charts, pie charts and more.
Filter by specific lead data rules or segment using custom fields. Click on the section where it says “Segment by” and select “Source channel ID”.
You’ll be able to see how many leads are from your outsourced cold calling services.
Pipedrive in action: NJ Media, a Latvian marketing agency, used Pipedrive’s data to its advantage. Despite the economic challenges of 2020, the agency expanded globally into new markets.
Pipedrive’s data-driven reporting and analytic features helped the agency identify its highest-value customers in Latvia. From there, NJ Media targeted companies within similar industries and won seven new clients through cold calling efforts.
Integrate other tools to streamline workflows
In addition to using cold calling services, you can integrate Pipedrive with other cold outreach tools for visibility across all outreach channels.
Check Pipedrive’s Marketplace for cold outreach tools you may already be using. Just type in a keyword or the app name you want to integrate.
You can find an assortment of tools such as:
Cold email automation (e.g., lemlist, Woodpecker, Mailshake)
LinkedIn outreach platforms (e.g., Surfe, Buzz.ai, ReachOut)
B2B phone prospecting (e.g., MonsterConnect)
The above tools are just a fraction of the available integrations. Pipedrive’s Marketplace has hundreds of app connections covering every sales and marketing aspect.
How Pipedrive helps
AppAgent, a mobile app and game marketing agency, shows the power of integrating Pipedrive with other tools.
In 2020, with the pandemic looming, AppAgent lacked tools for contact information, a clear sales pipeline and reporting. Pipedrive’s sales-focused CRM solved all of these issues.
Still, the real growth accelerator came from integrations. AppAgent integrated Pipedrive with Gravity Forms to capture website leads, Dealbot for Slack to update the team on leads and Surfe to keep LinkedIn data current.
With this unified system, the team doubled easily from 15 to 30 employees.
Creating a tech stack that matches your specific workflows is key to sales success. Start with your biggest pain point and find an integration that solves it, then continually expand your ecosystem as your needs grow.
Final thoughts
Outsourcing cold calling services can help you scale your small business faster. By letting professional cold callers handle lead generation, your “closers” can focus on converting potential customers.
Choose providers who track specific metrics and offer transparent reporting. To ensure success, set up quality control systems, clear handoff processes and proper CRM integration.
Ready to optimize sales outreach for your target market? Start your free Pipedrive trial to see how proper CRM integration amplifies your outsourced call efforts.
