Who an appointment-setting agency is calling
An agency calls on someone else's behalf. The people on the list are decision-makers at the client's target accounts: founders and owners, heads of sales, marketing, operations or IT, finance leaders, depending on what the client sells.
They didn't ask for the call and they don't know the agency. Their calendars are full, their direct lines often go to voicemail, and many sit behind a gatekeeper. The job is to reach the person who can say yes to a meeting, earn a minute of attention, and hand the client a meeting that actually happens.
What slows an agency's calling down
- Several clients, several lists. A rep may work one client's list in the morning and another's after lunch, each with its own ideal customer, script and meeting criteria. Every switch costs calling time.
- Lists you didn't build. Clients hand over lists of mixed quality: old exports, bought data, contacts who left long ago. Calling the wrong person burns the client's budget and the rep's morning. See data decay.
- Every call is reported to a client. Each attempt needs an outcome the client can see, which turns into note-taking when the dialer doesn't log it.
- Headcount follows contracts. When a client signs, you add reps. When a retainer ends, those reps move to another account, and seats paid for in between sit idle.
- The meeting is the product. A booked meeting that never happens doesn't count, so the rep needs the contact's details in front of them to qualify the person before asking for time.
How Personnect fits an agency
Personnect was built for this work. Its co-founder and CEO, Johnny-Lee Reinoso, runs C-Level Partners, a firm whose reps book meetings with executives for its clients, and he set out to build Personnect after the dialers his team paid for kept getting in the way.
Personnect is a parallel dialer for B2B outbound sales teams that calls up to five people at once per rep. The rep is connected the moment a person answers, with the contact's details already on screen, and voicemail is detected and skipped, so the rep moves on to the next contact. Personnect calls each contact from a local number in their own area code.
For the lists clients hand you: Michael, the assistant built into Personnect, checks each lead's title, company and phone number before anyone dials, and every lead comes back enriched, stale or retired, with bad numbers flagged. Personnect offers lead enrichment at 15¢ a lead.
After each call, the summary, transcript and outcome of every call are logged and synced to your CRM, so the rep has nothing to type. Personnect offers native two-way integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce; any other CRM through CSV import and export, and a direct integration on request. No CRM needed: upload a list and Personnect works as your outbound CRM, with contacts, call history, outcomes and recordings in one place.
On cost, Personnect charges 8.5¢ per minute on answered calls, and calls that ring out, are busy or fail cost nothing. It has no seat fees, no platform fee and unlimited users, so adding reps for a new client doesn't add seat fees. There is no contract and no minimum term on the usage plan.
A first line to try on a client's prospect
When you call for a client, say whose behalf you're calling on in the first breath, and make the reason about the prospect's company rather than the client's product:
Hi, is this [first name]? This is [your name], calling for [client].
I know I'm calling out of the blue. [Client] works with [their role] at companies like [their company], usually on [the problem the client solves]. Can I ask you one question to see if it's even relevant?
Decide with each client how reps introduce themselves, and keep it the same on every call for that client. For the questions, the ask, pushback answers and a voicemail, use the free cold call script generator, then swap in the client's offer.
Calling rules when you call for clients
Calling businesses doesn't take a call outside the rules, and calling for a client raises the question of whose lists and requests apply. The glossary explains the main terms, with official sources:
- TCPA: the US federal law that restricts autodialed, prerecorded and telemarketing calls.
- National Do Not Call Registry: the federal list of numbers whose owners have said they don't want telemarketing calls.
- Internal do-not-call list: a company's own record of the people who asked it not to call them again.
- Calling time restrictions: rules on when telemarketing calls may be made, in the called person's local time.
When a prospect asks not to be called again, settle with each client how that request is recorded and passed on, and ask counsel how the rules apply to calls made in a client's name. This isn't legal advice.