Hire an appointment setter
Consistent outreach and follow-up that fills the calendar. It is the one role here with an output you can count, and that is precisely why it gets bought badly so often.
- From $10/hour
- Both sides of every match vetted
- Member of VAASA
The handover
What moves, and what doesn’t.
Every agency will tell you what a hire takes off your plate. This is that list, and the other one.
Hands over
- Outbound sequences run to a schedule rather than in bursts
- Follow-up on inbound enquiries inside the window you set
- Qualifying against criteria you have written down
- Booking meetings straight into the right diary, with context attached
- Chasing no-shows and rebooking them
- Nurture follow-up on the people who said not yet
- List building and research on the accounts you have named
- Weekly reporting on what was sent, answered and booked
Stays with you
- Price, terms and anything that sounds like a commitment
- The sales conversation itself, once the meeting starts
- Deciding which segments and accounts are worth pursuing
- Approving the script, and any change to it
- Judgement calls on a prospect who is a bad fit but keen
None of this is a limitation we are apologising for. It is the part of the job that only works if it is yours, and an arrangement that pretends otherwise fails in month two.
The role
What the week actually looks like.
Appointment setting is the only role on this site with a number attached to it, and that is both why businesses buy it and why they buy it badly. A count of booked meetings is easy to promise, easy to report and easy to hit by booking people who were never going to buy.
The work itself is persistence more than it is persuasion. Most outbound fails because it stops — a sequence gets sent twice and abandoned, an inbound enquiry gets one reply and no second, and the follow-up that would have landed on day nine never happens. A professional whose whole week is that follow-up does better than a salesperson doing it between meetings, not because they are more convincing but because they are still there on day nine.
Qualification is where the value is decided. The difference between a useful setter and an expensive one is entirely what they refuse to book. That means the criteria have to exist in writing before anyone starts, and the reporting has to credit a clean disqualification rather than only a booking. Get that wrong and the role generates calendar entries that cost your sales team more time than they were saving.
Everything that sounds like a commitment stays with you. Price, terms, availability, what the product will do — a setter’s job ends at a booked meeting with the context attached, and it should be clear to the prospect that this is what is happening. That boundary is not modesty; it is what stops your first impression being a promise you did not make. The sales support page covers how it fits alongside pipeline work.
On lists and consent. If your prospects are in the UK or the EU, where the contact data came from is a real question with a real answer required, and “a supplier provided it” is not one. This is worth settling before the first sequence rather than after a complaint, and it is a question we will raise on the call rather than wait to be asked.
Support is arranged at fifteen, thirty or forty hours a week from $10 an hour — see pricing. Most businesses pair this with CRM management, because outreach into a pipeline nobody maintains produces activity rather than meetings.
Before you hire
Four things worth checking, wherever you hire.
These apply to any provider, including this one. A page that is only useful if you buy from us is not a guide.
Ask what happens to a lead that says no.
A setter measured only on bookings has an incentive to book people who should not have been booked, and you pay for that twice — once in the hour and once in the pipeline. Agree what a disqualification looks like and make it something they are credited for, not penalised for.
Ask where the list came from.
Outreach into a list nobody can account for is a compliance problem in the UK and the EU and a reputational one everywhere. You should be able to say how each contact got there, and the answer should not be that a supplier provided it.
Ask who is allowed to change the script.
Scripts have to change — that is how they get better. What matters is that changes are proposed and approved rather than drifting, because a setter improvising their way to a better response rate is also improvising the promises your business is now making.
Ask what a bad week looks like before you agree a target.
Outreach is seasonal, lumpy and occasionally just quiet. A provider who cannot describe a bad week is either inexperienced or about to hit a number by lowering the bar on who gets booked. The honest answer is specific and slightly disappointing.
Support levels
Fifteen, thirty or forty hours a week.
15 hrs / week
Nira Focus
Focused support. More time for what matters.
Founders and professionals who need consistent administrative support without a full-time commitment.
30 hrs / week
Nira Elevate
More support. More capacity to grow.
Growing businesses that need deeper support across administration, clients, systems and daily operations.
40 hrs / week
Nira Signature
Dedicated support. Seamlessly integrated.
Executives and established businesses requiring a dedicated professional who becomes an extension of the team.
From $10/hour. Sales support is delivered at one of three levels, and a business can move between them as the work grows.
Questions
Before you enquire.
Will you guarantee a number of appointments a month?
No, and we would be cautious of anybody who does. A guaranteed number is a promise about your market, your offer and your list rather than about the work, and the only reliable way to hit one is to lower the standard for what counts as an appointment. What is agreed up front is the activity, the qualification criteria and the reporting, all of which are things the professional actually controls.
Is this cold calling?
It can include calls, and for most businesses the bulk of it is email, LinkedIn and follow-up on inbound enquiries. What it is not is a dialler operation — one professional working a defined list carefully is a different thing from volume calling, and if volume calling is what you want, this is not the service.
Who writes the script?
You do, or you and the professional together in the first fortnight, and you approve it. Once it is agreed, changes are proposed rather than made — the point being that everything said to a prospect is something your business has signed off. That matters more than it sounds, because a setter is often the first impression a company makes.
How does this fit with the sales team I already have?
In front of them. The setter runs the part of the funnel that is sequence and persistence, and hands over a booked meeting with the context attached. The conversation, the pricing and the close stay with your salespeople, which is usually where the time was being lost — good salespeople are rarely short of ability and often short of a full calendar.
Which time zone should they work?
The one your prospects answer the phone in. South Africa is UTC+2 all year with no daylight saving, so a standard day covers a UK working day and an afternoon start covers a US East Coast morning — and unlike arrangements that shift twice a year, the sequence you set up in March is still landing at the same local hour in November.
Where this goes next
Related pages.
The service
Industries
Get started
Tell us what the week looks like.
A short call if you would rather talk it through, or a short form if you would rather write it down.