Outsourcing Cold Calling to the Philippines: A Guide

Introduction

Cold calling isn’t dead; lazy cold calling is. The problem for most B2B teams isn’t the phone, it’s the math. US-based SDRs are expensive, ramp times are long, and leaders are expected to hit ever-higher pipeline targets with the same (or smaller) headcount.

That’s why so many companies are looking at the Philippines. The country’s IT‑BPM industry generated about $38B in revenue and employed 1.82 million people in 2024, with contact centers making up the vast majority of that work. It’s one of the most mature, specialized outsourcing hubs on the planet, especially for phone-based work.

But there’s a big gap between “we hired a cheap call center” and “we have a reliable offshore SDR engine that feeds our AEs with qualified meetings.” This guide is about closing that gap.

We’ll walk through why the Philippines is such a strong fit for outbound, what the real cost savings look like, how to pick the right partner, how to structure and manage a Philippines-based cold calling team, and how all of this plugs into your current B2B sales motion. We’ll also look at how agencies like SalesHive run hybrid US–Philippines models that give you the best of both worlds.

Grab a coffee; let’s deconstruct what smart outsourcing to the Philippines actually looks like.

Why the Philippines Became a Global Hub for Cold Calling

A massive, mature BPO ecosystem

If you’re going to build a mission-critical piece of your revenue engine offshore, you want to do it in a market that lives and breathes this stuff.

The Philippines’ IT‑BPM industry is exactly that. In 2024 it brought in around $38B in export revenue and employed roughly 1.82 million people, up from 1.7 million a year prior. Contact centers are the core of that ecosystem: they represent about 83% of total IT‑BPM revenues and 89% of the workforce, or roughly $31.5B and 1.62 million employees.

On the global stage, research from outsourcing firm PITON-Global estimates that the Philippine contact center industry holds about 16% of the global outsourcing market, with an annual revenue contribution of roughly $38B and a workforce of 1.8 million professionals. Put simply: you’re not experimenting in an emerging market. You’re plugging into a very large, very battle-tested machine.

For cold calling specifically, that maturity shows up in:

• A deep bench of agents who are used to outbound, objections, and high call volume.
• Managers who know how to coach phone skills and run QA.
• Infrastructure (redundant internet, dialers, QA tools) purpose-built for high-volume calling.

English proficiency and cultural alignment

Language and culture are where the Philippines really stands out.

On the EF English Proficiency Index, the Philippines scores 569 and ranks 28th globally, well above the global average of 488. ef.com In the 2023 index, it ranked second in Asia and 20th worldwide, in the “high proficiency” band. English is an official language, and it’s the de facto language of business, higher education, media, and government.

EF also breaks down scores by job function: customer service professionals in the Philippines score around 579, and sales professionals score around 572—both comfortably in the high proficiency range. ef.com That’s exactly the talent pool you’re drawing from when you hire call center SDRs.

Culturally, the Philippines is heavily exposed to US media and business norms. That shows up in:

• Familiarity with US holidays, idioms, and small talk.
• Comfort speaking with senior Western executives.
• A service-oriented, hospitality-driven mindset that plays well in sales conversations.

Is every single rep “accent-less”? Of course not. But with a good provider, the accent is usually neutral enough that the only thing that matters is whether they’re adding value in the first 15-30 seconds of the call.

Time zone and 24/7 coverage

From a scheduling standpoint, the Philippines runs on GMT+8. That’s perfect if you’re selling into North America, Europe, or APAC and you want extended hours or true 24/7 coverage.

Most large BPOs already run around-the-clock operations. Providers like SimplySource note that Philippine teams can deliver cost savings of up to 70% while also supporting 24/7 operations, with staff happy to work whatever standard hours suit the client. Night shift isn’t an exception; it’s the norm.

For outbound, that means you can:

• Cover multiple US time zones from a single hub.
• Run early-morning/late-evening follow-up blocks that in-house SDRs hate.
• Keep inbound lead response times tight outside your domestic working hours.

Government support and infrastructure

The Philippine government has treated BPO as a strategic industry for over two decades. IT‑BPM is now considered a “vital economic pillar,” with over 370,000 new direct jobs and $8.5B in incremental revenue created since 2022 alone.

To keep that flywheel spinning, the government offers:

• Tax incentives via PEZA and BOI for qualified BPO operators.
• Investment in IT parks and high-speed connectivity.
• Education partnerships and workforce programs aimed at contact center and IT‑BPM skills.

Recent tax reforms, like reduced rates for registered BPO firms and multi‑year tax holidays, further strengthen the case for foreign companies to run operations there. This policy support is one reason you see so many global brands-and specialist sales agencies-building long-term footprints in the Philippines instead of constantly shopping new low-cost locations.

The Business Case: Cost, Quality, and Performance

Let’s talk numbers, because that’s usually what kicks this whole conversation off.

The cost side: why the arbitrage is still very real

Several independent sources peg potential labor savings at 50-70% when outsourcing to the Philippines versus hiring equivalent roles in the US, UK, or Australia. One detailed breakdown from Outsource Philippines puts typical BPO hourly rates in the $8-16 range, versus $24-32 for similar roles in the US. That’s before you factor in benefits, payroll taxes, office space, and tech.

On the wage side:

• Indeed estimates the average US call center rep earns about $18.68 per hour, or roughly $3,000 per month before benefits.
• A survey of Philippine BPOs shows many call center agents earning PHP 15,000-25,000 per month (roughly a few hundred US dollars), depending on role and location.

No, you’re not paying individual reps that full arbitrage; your provider captures a healthy margin for management, facilities, and tech. But even after that, your fully-loaded cost per SDR is usually dramatically lower than a US hire.

For B2B teams, the more important metric is cost per qualified meeting or opportunity. Well-run Philippines programs often deliver CPA and cost-per-SQO numbers that beat in-house programs by a wide margin, even after you factor in vendor markups.

Quality and stability: not the wild west anymore

A fair concern about offshore teams is quality and churn. Historically, Philippine contact centers did have eye-watering attrition-industry surveys used to show 60-70% of agents leaving their companies in a year.

That picture has changed. According to the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), voluntary attrition slowed from 36% in 2021 to 31% in 2022, and preliminary data shows voluntary attrition dropping to around 19% in the first half of 2023, with estimated full-year voluntary attrition at 25-30%.

Why does that matter to you?

• You’re less likely to have constant rep churn on your account.
• Training investments compound because people actually stick around.
• Providers can build experienced, specialized B2B teams instead of constantly backfilling.

In other words, you’re not just saving money; you’re often getting a more stable, more experienced phone workforce than you could build locally.

Performance benchmarks: what good looks like

Globally, cold calling has gotten tougher. Benchmarks in 2025 put average dial-to-meeting rates around 2-2.5% across B2B programs. That’s true whether the rep is in Denver or Davao.

What changes with the Philippines is the unit economics:

• A US SDR at $80-100K fully loaded booking 15 meetings/month might have a cost per meeting north of $450-600.
• A Philippines SDR at a fraction of the cost can deliver similar volume with a much lower cost per meeting, especially in a well-structured program with strong data and coaching.

A realistic success scenario for a dedicated, well-managed Philippines SDR might look like:

• 80-120 dials per day, depending on list quality and personalization.
• 8-15 live conversations per day.
• 10-20 qualified meetings per month, with a 70-80% show rate.

The exact math depends on your ACV, motion, and data quality, but the main point is this: you can hit the same or better output per rep at a much lower input cost, then reinvest the savings into better data, content, and AE capacity.

How to Structure an Outsourced Cold Calling Program in the Philippines

Outsourcing isn’t just “hire some people and let them dial.” The structure of your program determines whether you get signal or noise.

Step 1: Get brutally clear on strategy before you offshore

Before you talk to a single vendor, answer these internally:

1. What is the primary job of this team?
• Net-new meetings with net-new accounts?
• Warming up existing CRM leads?
• Expansion into existing customers?

1. What’s the motion?
• Pure outbound to cold accounts?
• Mixed inbound follow-up + outbound?
• Event or content follow-up?

1. What’s the ACV and complexity?
• Sub‑$10K deals with short cycles can often be handled almost end-to-end offshore.
• $50K+ ACV and multi-stakeholder deals typically need tight handoffs to in-house AEs after the first meeting.

1. How will success be measured?
• Meetings booked? Opportunities created? Pipeline dollars? Revenue?

If you can’t answer those, you’re not ready to outsource. You’ll just export your internal confusion to another time zone.

Step 2: Decide on a hybrid model

For complex B2B, the most effective structure tends to be hybrid:

• US-based leadership and strategy
• Own ICP definition, messaging, and qualification criteria.
• Run final-stage coaching and AE enablement.
• Philippines-based SDR pod
• Executes dials, emails, and social touches.
• Runs first-pass qualification and books meetings.

Agencies like SalesHive explicitly use this model: US-based strategists plus a mix of US and Philippine SDRs, all running off the same playbook and tech stack. You get strategic alignment with your market plus the scale and cost efficiency of an offshore team.

Step 3: Build the playbook they’ll actually run

Your outsourced team needs more than a script; they need an operating system:

• ICP and segmentation: Clear firmographics, technographics, and pain signals. For example: “US SaaS companies, 50-500 employees, using Salesforce and HubSpot, hiring SDRs, with recent Series B+ funding.”
• Target personas: Titles, responsibilities, and typical objections for each persona (VP Sales, Head of RevOps, CFO, etc.).
• Messaging pillars: The 3-4 core problems you solve and proof points for each.
• Qualification criteria: What makes a meeting “good” vs “bad”? Budget? Timeline? Tech stack? Team size?
• Talk tracks: Intros, discovery questions, objection handling frameworks-not word-for-word scripts.
• Cadences: Multichannel sequences that define the rhythm of calls, emails, and social touches.

Top-performing outbound teams increasingly use phone-led, multichannel cadences instead of single-channel outreach. Data SalesHive cites shows multichannel programs outperform single-channel by over 2-3x in key metrics. You want your Philippines pod working those same kinds of plays.

Step 4: Define KPIs and instrumentation

At minimum, you should track:

• Dials per day (but don’t obsess here).
• Connect rate (conversations per dial).
• Meeting rate (meetings per conversation and per dial).
• Show rate (held vs scheduled).
• Opportunity rate (opportunities created per meeting).
• Pipeline and revenue sourced.

Require your partner to:

• Log all activities in your CRM or a synced system.
• Tag outcomes consistently (no more “misc” buckets).
• Provide weekly and monthly reports with trends, not just snapshots.

If a vendor can’t give you consistent, drillable metrics, it’s hard to know whether performance issues are about data, reps, messaging, or market.

Evaluating and Selecting a Philippines Cold Calling Partner

Not all Philippine providers are created equal-and most of them were built around customer support, not B2B outbound. You need to filter ruthlessly.

Criterion 1: B2B sales development focus

You want a provider that:

• Talks in terms of ICPs, meetings, opportunities, and pipeline-not just “calls handled” or “tickets closed.”
• Has case studies and references in your ACV band and industry.
• Can show sample B2B call recordings that sound like your motion.

If their website is 90% about customer service and back office with a tiny “telemarketing” tab, be cautious.

Criterion 2: Dedicated vs shared agents

Shared agents (who bounce between multiple clients in a day) are fine for low-stakes B2C, but they’re a killer for B2B sales development. Dedicated SDRs:

• Build familiarity with your product, stories, and objections.
• Learn your accounts and can reference prior touches.
• Are easier to coach and hold accountable.

SalesHive, for example, uses dedicated Philippines callers assigned to specific clients, managed by SDR managers and US-based strategists, with ongoing training and call reviews baked in. That’s the model you want to emulate.

Criterion 3: Management layer and QA

Ask very blunt questions:

• How many reps per manager?
• How often do managers listen to calls and coach?
• What does your QA rubric look like?
• Can we join calibration sessions and review calls together?

A mature B2B partner will talk about structured QA, coaching rhythms, and clear performance improvement processes. If they wave their hands and say “we monitor quality,” assume they don’t.

Criterion 4: Tech stack and integration

Your provider should be comfortable integrating with:

• Your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.).
• Dialers and conversation analytics tools.
• Email and sequencing platforms.

Many Philippine contact centers are already leveraging AI tools (predictive dialers, conversational analytics, etc.) across customer support and sales functions; around two-thirds of IT‑BPM companies report actively implementing AI in functions including customer support and sales/marketing. You want that sophistication working for you, not against you.

Criterion 5: Compliance and data security

The Philippines has its own Data Privacy Act (Republic Act 10173), which defines personal information controllers and processors and requires them to implement organizational, physical, and technical safeguards for personal data. Good providers will be very familiar with this and should be able to explain:

• How they protect personal data (encryption, access controls, monitoring).
• Where data is stored (onshore vs offshore, cloud providers).
• How they handle consent and opt-outs.
• Policies for call recording and retention.

On top of that, you need to ensure they understand and can support your obligations under TCPA, GDPR, CCPA, or other applicable regimes.

Red flags to watch for

• Refusal to share call recordings.
• No clear explanation of how reps are assigned and managed.
• Overly aggressive guarantees (“we’ll 5x your pipeline in 30 days”).
• Zero references in your region or industry.

If the pitch sounds like a “boiler room” play, that’s not who you want representing your brand.

Managing Quality, Compliance, and Culture Across Borders

Once you’ve picked a partner, the work isn’t “set it and forget it.” This is where a lot of teams stumble.

Build one revenue team, not “us and them”

Your Philippines SDRs should feel like part of the same revenue org as your in-house SDRs and AEs. That means:

• Shared Slack/Teams channels.
• Weekly pipeline and performance reviews together.
• Joint call coaching sessions with managers from both sides.
• Involvement in product updates and messaging changes.

The more context they have, the more nuanced and credible they’ll sound on calls. Teams that wall off offshore reps behind account managers rarely get the same quality of conversations.

Run a tight call coaching loop

Call recording is non-negotiable. It gives you:

• Direct insight into what prospects are actually saying.
• Real examples for coaching intros, discovery, and objection handling.
• A way to calibrate how offshore reps are representing your brand.

A good rhythm:

• Managers review at least 3-5 calls per rep per week.
• Weekly or bi-weekly group coaching focused on a specific skill (pattern interrupts, asking for next steps, handling “send me an email,” etc.).
• Quarterly calibration sessions where your internal leaders and the provider align on what “good” sounds like.

SalesHive, for instance, records all calls, assigns every rep to an SDR manager, and runs continuous training specific to each client’s messaging. That sort of process is what you want to model, whether you work with them or somewhere else.

Enforce data discipline and compliance

You can’t just punt compliance to the vendor and hope for the best. Treat it like a shared responsibility:

• Data handling: Agree on what fields are stored, how long they’re kept, and who can access them.
• Consent and opt-out: Standardize how opt-outs are logged across systems and ensure every system honors them.
• Do-not-call rules: Align on how DNC lists are maintained and scrubbed before dialing.
• Breach response: Have a clear process for incident reporting and remediation.

The Philippines’ Data Privacy Act explicitly requires controllers to use contractual or other reasonable means to ensure third parties provide a comparable level of protection when processing personal data. That’s your legal cue to make sure your contracts spell out expectations.

Manage attrition like the risk it is

Even with industry-wide improvements, BPO attrition is still higher than in many other sectors. CCAP data shows total voluntary and involuntary attrition around 45% in 2022, though that’s a huge improvement from 60-70% pre‑2016.

Mitigate the impact by:

• Asking your provider about their own attrition rates, tenure, and retention programs.
• Building documentation for your playbooks so new reps don’t have to start from scratch.
• Structuring your contract to require dedicated replacements and knowledge transfer when reps roll off.

Attrition doesn’t have to tank performance if the system is stronger than any individual rep.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

So how do you plug all of this into your world without blowing up your quarter?

Scenario 1: You’ve never done structured outbound

If you’re a founder-led or AE-led org where outbound is mostly “best effort,” outsourcing to a Philippine SDR pod can be a fast way to build a real program-if you bring a clear ICP and someone internally who owns strategy.

Start by:

• Defining a narrow, high-probability ICP segment (one industry, one region, one ACV band).
• Working with a partner to build a multichannel cadence and talk tracks.
• Launching a 90‑day pilot with 1-2 SDRs targeting that slice of the market.

Your internal team’s job is to provide feedback on lead quality, refine messaging, and close the loop with AEs. Think of it as renting an SDR engine while you prove that outbound actually works for your motion.

Scenario 2: You have in-house SDRs but need more coverage

If you already have a small SDR team and solid playbooks, the Philippines is a natural way to:

• Cover additional segments (new verticals, down-market, or international).
• Increase touch points in existing accounts without burning out your team.
• Offload low-value but necessary work (recycling old leads, reactivating closed/lost, nurturing low-intent MQLs).

A common pattern:

• In-house SDRs own strategic accounts, ABM, and complex segments.
• Philippines SDRs own broader TAM coverage and follow-up on lower-intent leads.

You maintain tight control over messaging and sequence design, while your offshore team provides additional volume and consistency.

Scenario 3: You’re entering a new market or product category

Testing a new ICP or region always feels risky. Instead of hiring a full in-house pod, you can:

• Spin up a Philippines-based SDR pod dedicated to that experiment.
• Give them a clear brief and a distinct set of accounts.
• Run for 60-90 days and see if you can create pipeline at a reasonable cost per opportunity.

If it works, double down-maybe then add in-house SDRs or AEs focused on that segment. If it doesn’t, you shut down the experiment without legacy headcount or severance.

Where SalesHive fits in

If all of this sounds like a lot to orchestrate, that’s because it is. Building an effective Philippines cold calling program requires strategy, data, tech, and management.

SalesHive is one of the agencies built specifically to handle that complexity. Since 2016, they’ve helped hundreds of B2B companies book over 100,000 meetings via a mix of cold calling, email outreach, SDR outsourcing, and list building, using specialized SDR pods that include both US-based and Philippines-based reps. Their AI-powered tools (like the eMod engine for email personalization) and proprietary dialer platform sit on top of that human team to keep outreach targeted and efficient.

Whether you work with them or another provider, the key is the same: keep strategy and accountability on your side, and use offshore execution as a force multiplier, not a crutch.

Conclusion + Next Steps

Outsourcing cold calling to the Philippines isn’t a magic trick-it’s just a different, often better, way to deploy SDR capacity.

On the plus side, you’re tapping into:

• One of the world’s most mature contact center ecosystems.
• A highly English-proficient, culturally aligned workforce.
• Cost structures that can reduce your labor and overhead by 50-70% without sacrificing quality.

On the risk side, you’re exposed to:

• Vendors that treat B2B sales like generic telemarketing.
• Programs that optimize for dials instead of qualified meetings.
• Compliance and data security issues if you don’t do your homework.

The teams that win with Philippines-based cold calling all do the same things well:

1. They define a crisp ICP and outbound strategy before they outsource.
2. They pick partners with true B2B SDR expertise, dedicated reps, and real management.
3. They run hybrid models where internal leaders own narrative and offshore teams own execution.
4. They obsess over call quality, conversion metrics, and feedback loops-not vanity activity numbers.

If you’re serious about testing this, your next steps are straightforward:

• Audit your current outbound economics.
• Document your ICP and qualification criteria.
• Build a vendor scorecard and shortlist.
• Design a 90‑day pilot with clear KPIs.

And if you want a partner that already has the playbooks, tech, and Philippines SDR talent in place, talk to a specialist like SalesHive. You’ll spend less time reinventing the wheel and more time doing what actually matters: turning conversations into pipeline and pipeline into revenue.