How appointment setting works, in-house or outsourced

What an appointment setter does

In B2B sales, the setter books a call or video meeting between a prospect and an account executive. The setter finds the right person, gets them on the phone, and books 30 minutes with someone who can sell. Many companies give this job to a sales development representative, who also does the prospecting.

In B2C, the meeting is often at the customer's home or site. Solar is a good example: a rep drives out to look at the roof and the power bill. Each missed visit costs a rep half a morning, so the setter's real job is making sure the visit goes ahead with the right people at home.

Either way, the setter doesn't sell the product. They sell the meeting.

What to confirm before you book

A script gets the setter through the opening. What protects the closer's time is qualifying, and it has to happen before a meeting goes in the calendar. Confirm that:

• They're the person who decides, or the decision maker will be in the meeting.
• They have the problem your product solves, in their own words, written in the CRM.
• There's a reason to talk now: a contract ending, a bill that went up, a project with a date on it.
• They know who the meeting is with, how long it takes and what happens in it.
• For a site or in-home visit: the address, access, and that everyone who owns the decision will be home.
• A time they chose, booked straight into the closer's calendar while they're still on the phone.

If a lead fails one of these, don't book a weaker meeting to hit a target. Book a follow-up call instead, or hand the lead back to marketing.

Show rate, and how to protect it

Show rate (in solar, sit rate) is the share of booked meetings that take place. A no-show wastes the closer's time as well as the setter's.

What lifts it is mostly routine work:

• A confirmation message straight after the call, with the time, the name of the person they'll meet, and a way to move it.
• Reminders by SMS and email the day before and on the day.
• A short confirmation call for visits that cost the most to miss.
• Easy rescheduling. A moved meeting is better than a no-show.
• Calendar hygiene: setters book only into slots the closer has opened, with travel time between site visits, and closers block time off before it gets booked.

Doing this for Nectr, an Australian solar provider, took no-shows from 40% to 30% (Nectr case study). Our guide to B2B lead generation walks the same numbers through the whole funnel.

The handover to the closer

The closer should walk into the meeting knowing what the setter learned. Put it in the CRM record the meeting is booked from, not in a chat message. A good handover note covers:

• Why they took the meeting, in a sentence or two.
• What they use today and what they pay for it, if they said.
• Who else is involved in the decision.
• Any objection they raised and what the setter said back.

Then the closer marks each meeting as held, no-show or unqualified, with a line on why. That's how the setter learns which leads to stop booking.

Measure cost per held meeting

Cost per booked meeting flatters a program with a weak show rate. Take everything appointment setting costs you in a month, including management time, and divide it by the meetings that took place.

A worked example, with round numbers for illustration. Say setting costs you $8,000 a month and books 80 meetings. That's $100 per booked meeting. At a 60% show rate, 48 meetings happen and each one costs about $167. At 70%, 56 happen and each costs about $143. Same spend. Only the show rate moved, and each held meeting got about 14% cheaper.

Then look one step further: held meetings that turn into sales. Qualifying before the visit helps here too, because reps meet buyers who are ready.

In-house or outsourced

Both work. The trade-offs are mostly about control and about who covers the gaps. You keep the legal responsibility either way.

Scroll sideways to see the whole table.

If you outsource, have the setters work in your CRM and phone system under named logins, so you hear the calls and see every booking. Ask for reporting on held meetings.

The rules in Australia and the UK

Booking a sales meeting on a cold or warm call is usually telemarketing, and the rules cover you even when a provider makes the calls. In Australia the Do Not Call Register doesn't block calls. You check your list against it, so wash your list within 30 days of calling (ACMA, Do Not Call Register). Calls are allowed 9am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays. The ACMA says a call that only reminds someone of an appointment isn't telemarketing (ACMA, dealing with telemarketing).

In the UK, PECR bans unsolicited marketing calls to numbers on the register kept under regulation 26. That register has two parts, the TPS and the Corporate TPS, so company numbers can be listed too (PECR regulation 26). Our guides to the Do Not Call Register and the Telephone Preference Service cover the detail, and our UK page explains how we work for UK teams. This is a summary, not legal advice.

Questions

Is appointment setting the same as telemarketing?

Booking a sales meeting on a cold or warm call is usually telemarketing, because the call promotes what you sell, so the calling rules apply. A call that only reminds someone of a meeting they already booked isn't, according to the ACMA.

How fast should a new lead be called?

As fast as you can manage, ideally within minutes. The longer a lead waits, the more likely someone else has called them first.

Next step

If your closers are sitting through no-shows, book a call with me. Bring last month's numbers from lead to held meeting, and we'll find where they drop off. If our telesales and appointment setting team isn't the right fit, I'll say so.