State of Small Talk 2026Does small talk help a sales call? We timed thousands of discovery calls to find out.

How Long to Chat

Sales training has a firm view on those minutes. Build rapport first, the advice goes, because people buy from people they like. So we tested it. From July through September we read the opening of thousands of calls, timed the chat before the first business question, and tagged what it covered.

To score each call we used two questions we already ask every brand. Right after the call: do you want a next step with this partner? A month or more later: are you still interested, or have you signed up? If small talk builds goodwill, longer chats should score higher on both.

They didn't. Brands wanted a next step after 79% to 87% of calls at every length. Calls with under 30 seconds of chat did as well as calls with five minutes or more. The month-later answers move around more, but they don't climb with length either. The shortest and longest groups hold the fewest calls, so read those two bars loosely. The pattern was the same in July, August and September.

What You Talk About Doesn't Matter Either

Maybe length is the wrong measure and the subject is what counts. A chat about someone's kids could do more than a chat about the weather. We tagged each opening with every topic it touched, from where people are based to sports, pets and holidays.

Every topic landed within two points of the others, between 82% and 84%. Covering more ground didn't help. Calls that touched four or more topics did no better than calls that touched none.

We Measured Rapport Four Ways

Length and topic are blunt measures. Rapport is supposed to come from how people talk, not what they talk about. So we read every opening again for the four moves sales trainers teach.

Did someone ask a follow-up about what the other person said? Did they find common ground? Did they build on each other's thread? Did both of them share something personal? We spot-checked that reading by hand before running it across the quarter.

Each move scored within a point of the 82% average. Calls with all four did no better than calls with none. The textbook doesn't hurt, but on these calls it didn't help either.

What Did Move It: A Joke That Landed

One thing did stand out. We read each opening for two more things: any playful moment at all, and a joke the other person clearly enjoyed. Enjoyed means they laughed, said it was funny, or played along.

Playful openings were common. More than half had some banter or a wry aside, and they did no better than plain ones, 82% against 81%. Trying to be funny isn't what moves the number.

A joke that landed is. When both people were clearly in on it, 94% of brands wanted a next step, 13 points above every other call. That held in each of the three months, and it held whether the chat ran one minute or five.

So you can hear a good call in its first few minutes: it's the moment two people click. More small talk won't fake that.

Jokes That Landed

Here is what that sounds like. Each of these openings is anonymized and printed as spoken.

Small Talk in Numbers

Almost nobody skips the chat. A typical call spends about two minutes on it before the first business question, and nearly a third run past three minutes.

What Everyone Talks About

"Where are you based?" opens more calls than anything else. Location came up on 71% of calls, nearly twice as often as the next topic. On a video call between strangers in different time zones, it's the easiest question there is. Work, travel, weather and family follow.

Small Talk by the Clock

When a call happens changes how long people chat. We split the quarter by weekday and start time and counted the share of calls that ran three minutes or more.

The later in the day, the longer the chat. Monday mornings and late afternoons run longest, with up to 36% of calls passing three minutes. Wednesday before 11am is the most businesslike slot of the week, at 17%. Mondays also bring the weekend and the game into it.

The Small Talk Awards

None of this wins you the next step, but some of it is very good. These are our picks from the quarter.

Honorable Mentions

A few more that made us laugh.

• I live in, like, literally the center of New Jersey, though, so I'm always like, no, no, it's for real. The center.
• I thought I would become a surfer out here. But I'm really more of a land animal.
• It's Friday, so I'm categorically great.
• It's so weird. My Zoom profile still has me with my seven month old son who is now five.
• It is a green screen. Yeah, but it looks pretty real.
• I've never been beaten by two people to one of these meetings. It's impressive.
• They say a good craftsman never blames his tools, but I'm not a good golfer, so I'm gonna break the clubs.
• With my wife here, she always orders the dessert first and only then.
• I was like, okay, what's the furthest away I could go for the least amount of money?answered by: "I did the opposite of you. Like, where can I spend the most amount of money per head per day ever?"

After the Call

Every chart above rests on two questions. Right after each call, we ask the brand whether they want a next step with the partner. A month or more later, we ask again where things stand.

Most brands leave a first call wanting more, and close to half are still interested a month on. Those two numbers are the baseline every split in this report is measured against.

The Small Talk Index

We'll run this every quarter. These are the three numbers we'll track, starting here.