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Guides for teams that make outbound calls

Impact Dialing explains how dialers pace calls, the U.S. rules that govern outbound calls and texts, and how call centers, political campaigns, and nonprofits run their phone programs. Every compliance guide links to the regulation it explains.

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Who Impact Dialing is for

Impact Dialing is written for the people who run outbound calling programs, whether that's a call center manager tuning a predictive dialer, a campaign organizer setting up a volunteer phone bank, or a nonprofit team calling donors and members. The work looks similar across all three, but the rules don't, and a setting that's fine on a political call can be a violation on a sales call.

If you manage a sales or service floor, start with how predictive, power, and preview dialers pace calls, then the predictive dialer settings that keep agents busy without breaking the 3 percent abandonment rule. The call center metrics guide defines the numbers you'll be watching while a campaign runs.

Campaigns and nonprofits work under different federal rules. The National Do Not Call Registry doesn't cover their calls, but the consent rules for prerecorded voices and autodialed calls to cell phones still do. Phone banking for political campaigns covers those rules alongside the practical side of running shifts, and TCPA and Telemarketing Sales Rule basics explains where charities and the telemarketers who call for them fit. For any program, the guide to writing outbound call scripts covers what the first few seconds of a call have to say.

The federal rules one sales call runs into

Compliance guides

  1. 01 · Before dialing

    Scrub the list

    Remove numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, using a download no more than 31 days old, along with everyone on your own do-not-call list.

    Do-not-call lists

  2. 02 · Scheduling

    Call inside the window

    Federal rules allow telemarketing calls from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the called person's local time, and some states set a narrower window.

    Calling hours

  3. 03 · Ringing

    Ring at least 15 seconds

    An unanswered call has to ring for at least 15 seconds or four rings before the dialer disconnects it.

    Ring time and abandonment

  4. 04 · The answer

    Connect within two seconds

    A live answer has to reach a representative within two seconds of the greeting, or hear a recorded message naming the seller with a callback number and an opt-out.

    The 3 percent rule

  5. 05 · The opening

    Say who's calling and why

    A sales call has to disclose the seller, that the purpose is to sell, and what's being sold, promptly and before the pitch gets going.

    Call script openings

  6. 06 · After the call

    Record opt-outs

    A request not to be called goes on your company list, has to be honored within 10 business days, and stays in force for five years.

    Company do-not-call lists

These are the federal rules for telemarketing calls as of October 2026, from the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule and the FCC's TCPA rules. Political and nonprofit calls follow different rules, states add their own, and none of this is legal advice.

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