Talk time is the total minutes a rep spends in live conversation, distinct from time spent dialing, waiting or leaving voicemails. It is the closest single number to what a cold-calling hour is actually for.
How it is measured
Sum of connected-call durations per rep per period. Exclude hold, ringing and voicemail; including them is what makes vendor talk-time claims incomparable.
Talk time is the metric parallel dialing is bought to raise, and the one worth holding a vendor to — it captures the benefit without inheriting connect rate’s dependence on data quality. If dials per hour triples and talk time does not move, the extra dials were spent on numbers nobody answers.
Very high talk time with flat meeting counts points at conversation quality or targeting rather than tooling, which is a coaching problem no dialer solves.
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