Appointment setting is the work of booking qualified meetings between prospects and sales reps. It is usually structured as a top-of-funnel service (in-house or outsourced) where SDR-level talent prospects, qualifies, and books discovery calls onto the AE's calendar. Standalone appointment-setting agencies typically charge $300-$700 per held meeting; managed SDR engagements price on a retainer plus performance basis. The distinction between the two: pure appointment-setting is volume-focused; managed SDR is pipeline-focused.
What's included in appointment setting?
Four activities. First, list-building: assembling target contacts against the ICP. Second, outreach: multi-channel sequencing across email, LinkedIn, and phone. Third, qualification: confirming the prospect's role, pain, and timeline meet agreed criteria before booking. Fourth, calendar coordination: handing the booked meeting to the AE with context. Strong appointment-setting providers also handle reschedule management and no-show follow-up; weaker ones drop the prospect the moment the meeting hits the AE's calendar.
The quality of an appointment-setting engagement is measured by show rate (percentage of booked meetings that actually happen), opportunity-creation rate (percentage of held meetings that become qualified opportunities), and downstream win rate. A vendor delivering 20 meetings per month at a 30% show rate and 20% opp creation is actually generating 1.2 opportunities per month. Pricing must be evaluated against this end-of-funnel math, not the raw meeting count.
Is appointment setting different from managed SDR?
Functionally close but philosophically different. Appointment-setting agencies optimize for raw meeting volume and price per meeting. Managed SDR engagements optimize for pipeline created and downstream conversion. The same activities (prospecting, outreach, booking) can produce different outcomes depending on which metric the vendor is paid against. Pure appointment-setting works when the buyer just needs meetings on the calendar regardless of quality; managed SDR works when the buyer needs qualified pipeline. ReachIQ's Done-for-You is structured as managed SDR with quality gates, not raw appointment-setting.
Related questions
What does appointment setting cost?
Pure per-meeting pricing typically runs $300-$700 per held meeting, sometimes higher for enterprise-grade SDR. Retainer-plus-performance models run $4K-$15K per month with output expectations of 8-20 qualified meetings. The cost per qualified opportunity is the right number to compare across vendors.
What's the typical show rate?
60-75% of booked meetings actually hold, depending on segment and reminder discipline. Below 60% suggests low-quality booking (over-promising to the prospect). Above 80% is unusually high and worth probing to understand whether the meetings are with the right buyers.
Is appointment setting B2B-only?
Mostly. Pure B2C appointment-setting exists in home services, financial services, and elective healthcare. B2B is where the model is most refined because the meeting itself has clear economic value (qualified discovery with a decision-maker).