Outsourced appointment setting: how it works

What appointment setting is

A calling agency phones the right person in an organisation on your behalf, explains what you do and books a meeting in your salesperson’s calendar. You run the sales conversation yourself; the agency makes sure it happens.

The difference from general telemarketing: the goal is one concrete step, a meeting with someone who can decide.

Start by defining a good appointment

Agree up front when an appointment counts. The sharper that definition, the less time your salespeople lose on meetings that go nowhere.

• With whom: the decision maker’s role.
• Which organisations: sector, size, region.
• What the other side should know: what the meeting is about and how long it takes.
• When: within what period and in whose calendar.

What you supply

• Your offer in a few sentences, and why customers choose you today.
• The target audience, or an existing contact list.
• Access to the calendar of whoever runs the meetings.
• A contact person who answers questions quickly during the campaign.

How the calling runs

• Intake: offer, audience and appointment criteria agreed.
• Script and briefing: a call guide written together; the callers are briefed on your business.
• Calling: every contact gets an outcome, with notes and a call-back time where needed.
• Weekly report: contacts, conversations and appointments, and what the market is saying.
• Adjusting: opening, list or criteria changed based on what works.

What to measure afterwards

• Appointments per calling hour: the basis for working out the cost per appointment.
• Show rate: how many appointments actually took place.
• Quality: how many fit your criteria and lead to a next step.
• Market feedback: which objections keep coming back.

Common mistakes

• No clear appointment criteria, so every appointment counts, including the wrong ones.
• Scaling up before you know what an appointment costs.
• Appointments left for days before anyone confirms them.
• No feedback from the salesperson to the agency on how the meetings went.

At Velora Connect

We start with an intake and a test campaign of 20 calling hours for €1,000 excluding VAT. Each week you see the outcome per contact and the appointments in your calendar. After that you decide, based on real numbers, whether to continue.