The math on an in-house appointment setter
What a dedicated rep costs, what a realistic month of output looks like, and the cost per held meeting compared with an outsourced agency. Real numbers, nothing rounded in our favor.
Owners ask whether an appointment setter is worth it. The honest answer depends on three numbers: what the rep costs, how many meetings they hold, and what a meeting is worth to you. Here are the first two with nothing hidden.
What a rep costs
A dedicated full-time setter with three to five years of sales experience, working your hours, runs about $2,600 a month through a staffing partner, plus bonuses, plus about $100 a month in tools (dialer, data). Call it $3,000 a month all-in for one unit. Our Run package, which adds the system, the data, the management and weekly reporting, is $4,950 a month per rep.
An outsourced appointment-setting agency runs $3,000–$12,000 a month, with callers who rotate and do not know your trade.
What a month of output looks like
A rep paced at about 50 dials an hour, 250 a day, has around 40–60 real conversations with decision makers a week in most contractor markets. From those, a realistic early-stage conversion is:
| Per month | |
|---|---|
| Dials | ~5,000 |
| Owner conversations | ~180 |
| Meetings booked | 15–20 |
| Meetings held | 12–15 |
Those are targets, not guarantees. They depend on the list, the offer, and the script. Month one is usually half that while the rep learns the trade.
Cost per held meeting
At $4,950 a month and 12 held meetings: about $410 per meeting with a decision maker. At 15: about $330. An outsourced agency at $6,000 a month delivering 6 meetings: $1,000 per meeting, and you do not own the list or the data.
What a meeting has to be worth
If one in six held meetings becomes a job, and your average commercial job has $20,000 of gross margin, a month of the rep produces two jobs, $40,000 of margin, on a $4,950 spend. If one in twelve closes, it is one job, $20,000, still four times the cost.
If your average job’s margin is under $5,000 or your close rate from a cold meeting is under one in fifteen, the numbers do not work and you should know that before hiring anyone. We will tell you so on the 15-minute call.
The part that is not math
A rep without a system burns out in ninety days. The list is bad, the script is improvised, the CRM is a spreadsheet, nobody reviews the calls. The math above assumes the rep steps into a built system: a loaded list, automated pre-work, a written script, a dialer, a target they set, and a weekly review. That system is the Build, and it is what makes the numbers hold.
A bonus structure for an appointment setter that does not blow up
Pay on held meetings, not dials. Let the rep set the target. No end-of-month forgiveness. The structure we run, the numbers, and the two mistakes that make reps game it or quit.
Custom CRM vs. HubSpot for a 20-person contractor
Off-the-shelf CRMs make you bend your sales process to their pipeline and charge per seat forever. A custom CRM built around your actual cycle now costs less than three years of licences. The honest comparison.
The pre-call sequence that gets owners to pick up
Cold calls to contractors mostly hit voicemail. The fix is not a better pitch; it is three touches before the call so the owner has seen your name. The sequence we run, step by step.
Fifteen minutes. No pitch deck.
Tell me what you build and where the leads come from today. I will tell you what I would change, and what it would cost. If it is not a fit, I will say so on the call.