Pay Per Appointment Lead Generation: Is It Really Worth It?

Unlike other lead generation agencies that charge for each lead, pay-per-appointment only charges for confirmed appointments with interested and qualified sales leads. 

It allows businesses to reduce risks associated with lead gen investment and only pay for tangible results, making it a more efficient and targeted lead-generation approach. 

In this post, we'll discuss pay-per-appointment lead generation, exploring how it works, its benefits, and how to find the right partner to maximize success. 

Let's get started!

What is pay-per-appointment lead generation?

Pay-per-appointment is a lead generation model where you only pay for confirmed appointments with potential customers who have expressed a genuine interest in their product or service. 

Unlike the other lead generation models, instead of simply handing you off anyone who shows interest as a lead, the lead generation agency has to follow up with them, nurturing them (a little) to ensure that they’re ACTUALLY interested in your product or service and then book a meeting with you. 

It is a highly effective way to generate leads for businesses and salespeople looking to cut through the long lead generation processes and workflows and use a targeted and cost-effective approach to quickly gain new meetings with customers.

How does pay-per-appointment lead generation work?

As you probably know already, you'll need to partner with a pay-per-appointment lead generation provider. 

Together, you'll discuss their proposal and work to create a customized lead gen campaign for your unique needs and goals. This includes defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), selecting the right messaging, and setting appointment goals.

Once you set up the campaign, the provider will launch it using one or a variety of marketing channels, such as cold email, LinkedIn outreach, paid ads, telemarketing, and whichever channel they prefer to reach your potential customers. 

In fact, you’ll discuss it all, and the preferred channel will be part of their lead generation strategy. 

Interested prospects will then schedule appointments directly with the appointment-setting provider's team, who will confirm their interest and schedule the appointment with you or your team. 

So, finally, you will only pay for confirmed appointments with interested prospects who meet the defined criteria.

Prospects who set up appointments with you are like low-hanging fruits; you can convert them into customers easily. 

This makes pay-per-appointment lead generation a more effective lead gen model since you only pay for tangible results — the number of people with whom you’ll have meetings. 

Why Nerdy Joe is the best pay-per-appointment lead gen agency

New businesses, startup marketing agencies, and salespeople spend much time scrapping the internet and exploring lead generation tactics to get new leads and sales appointments. It consumes their time and resources. 

Worse, if you are a new business, the sales team won't be able to focus on the parts of their work that matter to them the most: having meetings and closing deals. That’s where our pay-per-appointment lead generation services come in. 

Working with us guarantees a steady stream of meetings with key decision-makers for companies that fit your ICP the best. Won't bother you or report with vanity metric; we get you actual meetings with prospects who are the most likely to buy — and that's all you pay for.

We are a team of lead generation and outbound outreach experts who believe in using super-specific targeting to generate quality leads and meetings with qualified leads for our customers by way of cold email. 

To be fair, our pricing model is not totally pay-per-appointment. But we do offer a flat fee for a specific number of appointments or meetings booked for you per month. Learn more about our appointment setting costs here.

So here is what the math looks like for our most popular plan, the Gold $999 for six meetings booked with qualified leads. That’s about $167 per appointment when working with us. 

Here are two reasons why you should work with us over any other pay-per-appointment lead gen company. 

Better leads with top-notch cold email campaigns aligned with brand and target audience

Chances are that you’ve already heard this. 

“We'll send 1000 cold emails per day for every weekday and before the weekend, we will get 20 replies before the end of the week and book you four meetings with qualified buyers you can easily close.”

Most people and appointment setting service providers approach it as a numbers game. They believe the more people they target, the more likely they are to book more appointments for their clients. 

See them chanting it on Twitter. 

Granted, it does sound like some logical thinking to some extent and could even work sometimes. But we don’t do it, and here is why you shouldn’t hire an appointment setter who does this. 

• Poor and mediocre service: If you send a thousand cold emails a day, you are not taking the time to research your prospects to tailor your email to them. You’re blasting people with generic cold emails and pushing for action. They’ll know you’re selfish and lazy and hate you for it. 

• Getting flagged as a spammer: If you send that many cold emails daily, ESPs and ISPs will flag your email and IP addresses as spammers, which you are, indeed.  

• Damaging both brand and sender reputation: Appointment setter who does this will kill your company’s reputation, and you’ll get a bad rap on social media. Also, we are sure that’s not how you want your business to be represented.

• Poor leads quality: The quality of the leads they book the meetings with will be subpar, and you can’t convert, at least not easily or in a short timeframe. 

• Pissed prospects: Some prospects can be mean to you, saying things like “Remove me from your list”, “Don’t ever email me again,” or worse, “Really? Your cold email sucks”. 

• Deliverability issues: Your domain will face severe deliverability issues, and most of your future emails, if not landing in the spam folder, will bounce.

Apart from this, we don’t believe it’s an excellent service when you must send a thousand cold emails daily only to book four meetings. It rubs against our ethics as a group of marketers with quality work standards. 

Our ideal scenario is to send 20 super personalized cold emails, get 10 positive impressions and replies, and book six meetings with well-educated prospects genuinely interested in what you do. People you can actually convert. 

So, instead of sending random, template-based cold emails to thousands of people, we take an approach where we are super-specific in who we target and create customized cold emails that are personalized and tailored to their specific needs and unique individuals. 

We aim to make everyone we reach out to feel you know them, get them to take you seriously, and not just another spammer in their inbox. Stellar copywriting skills and personalization are how we achieve this. 

We take it slow, put in the research to find what your target audience cares about, and our cold email sequences are always optimized for maximum impact. How do we research people? 

We listen to podcasts they've been on, read blog posts they wrote, check their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon posts, and read discussions on forums they're in.

Using the data we collect, we craft customized first lines, icebreakers, and cold emails tailored to each individual. 

Here’s what it looks like in real life. We pitched CoSchedule’s Head of Content, Ben Sailer, and asked him if we could write for them.

Here’s what he replied 1 hour later.

But achieving this requires a meticulous process where we research prospects and build lists manually — and we enjoy it. 

Manual prospect research: we target a very short list, build a list, and do all the research ourselves.

So, in the first section, we explained how we research potential clients for your appointment-setting needs.

However, before we can start that process, we need to agree on who you want to target. Here's where our method comes in and why we believe it's your best option.

First off, we want to clarify that we do not use automated tools like ZoomInfo, Lusha, LeadsEngine, or Clearbit to build our lists. While these tools can speed up the process, they only provide basic data that can often be guessed. 

For example, using these tools, it’s easy to find data regarding companies that: 

• Are in the healthcare industry, 

• Have 50 to 100 employees,

• Have recently made an IPO,

• Are in Canada,

• Use Trello or Monday.com as part of their tech stack.

That’s generic data; it says nothing about the target company or its pain points. Even more, it does not tell us anything about the accounts we will target, and we can’t use the data to properly create cold emails that compel people to react and book appointments with you. 

So, we don’t use those, and here is what we do instead. 

Instead, we prefer to research manually, ask you meaningful questions and build our lists, ensuring we have accurate and comprehensive information on each prospect.

First, we will discuss your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Most people only have a surface-level understanding of the target audience, which does not help.

Here are the answers we get in general when we ask people about their ICP. 

• Our target customer profile is tech companies.

• Our ICPs are eCommerce companies based in the U.S.

• Our ICP is a DevOpp that uses GitHub.

That’s not specific enough. We want to set you up with people who are actually interested in what you offer or have needs your solution will solve — literally. And so, we ask you questions that help us know precisely who we should target and why. 

Here are some of the questions we ask our clients about the people we should target for them. 

• Which type of client has the highest lifetime value?

• Which type of clients is easiest to close?

• Which type of clients churns the fastest?

• What are the top 3 objections you hear from prospective clients during sales calls?

• Why did you start your company? 

• What pain points were you trying to solve?

• Etc.

Once you answer these questions, we can pinpoint precisely who we should target and why. And this type of information makes the difference between: 

“We’re targeting series A tech companies,” 

And 

“Our ICP is a VP of Sales at a b2b Healthcare company in Estonia selling to HR professionals, and his main pain points are lack of organization, time management, and team collaboration. He often refers to XYZ podcasts to get insights as to how to manage his team efficiently.” 

Once we have a clear understanding of who the ICP is, we build our list manually, and that’s what we use to run the cold email campaigns and book meetings with prospects that you can turn into customers.

No minimum commitment, no contract: We are a pay-per-performance appointment setting service. 

We have created a unique appointment setting service that doesn't require any long-term, binding contracts. 

We don't want to force you into a rigid payment plan where you pay us for six months, and we only make promises. We won’t require any commitment before bringing you the results you need. 

Instead, we offer flexible options that allow you to choose the payment plan that suits you best. Working with us means you’ll start getting results from the first month. 

We charge you only for the meetings we book for you, and if you're satisfied with the results, you can renew your plan. You won't be locked into a contract that doesn't work for you or your business.

Our pay-per-performance model allows you to scale up or down as needed without worrying about any financial or legal consequences. This way, you can always control what we do and make the best decisions.

We are committed to delivering results that exceed your expectations and keep you satisfied with our service. 

Four reasons you should consider pay-per-appointment lead generation 

Pay-per-appointment lead generation offers numerous benefits. Here are some of the key benefits.

1 - Improved conversion rates

As the leads generated through pay-per-appointment lead generation are people genuinely interested in your business and its service or product, you are more likely to see improved conversion rates. 

By only paying for confirmed appointments with interested prospects, you get to focus on nurturing these leads and increasing conversion. You can cut through uninterested prospects, the complicated buyer journey and immediately get sales appointments with people who are the most qualified and likely to buy. 

2 - Reduced risk for businesses

Pay-per-appointment lead generation minimizes your investment risk and lets you only pay for tangible results most likely to bring you ROI. 

It reduces the risk for you as a business, as you only pay for confirmed appointments with interested prospects. 

3 - Cost-effectiveness

Given that you only pay for confirmed appointments with interested and qualified prospects, this makes it a more cost-effective approach compared to other lead generation methods, where you pay for each lead or the workflow, regardless of whether or not it results in a meeting or sale.

4 - Increased flexibility

This lead generation model allows you to adjust your appointment goals and campaign criteria based on your evolving business needs. It gives you more flexibility to adapt your lead generation approach based on your priorities.

Four tips for finding the right pay-per-appointment lead generation agency for your needs

When it comes to lead generation, finding the right partner is a critical step to guarantee success. Here are some tips to help you find the right pay-per-appointment lead-generation company:

Tip 1: Evaluate their lead qualification process.

The idea is to ensure that your potential lead generation partner is not simply setting appointments with random people. 

You want appointments with people who will convert into customers, so you must evaluate your lead gen provider’s lead qualification process to ensure they have a rigorous process for qualifying leads. That’ll help you get qualified leads that’ll convert. 

Tip 2: Consider customization.

There is no one-size-fits-it-all approach to lead generation. No two companies are created equal. Your business is unique; you need a provider to offer you a customized approach tailored to your needs, goals, and budget.

Conventional methods and lead generation channels such as LinkedIn outreach or cold email might not work for your business.

Your lead gen provider needs to be able to work around that and provide you with a customized approach that yields your results. 

Tip 3: Look for flexibility.

You may need to adjust your appointment-setting goals and campaign criteria based on evolving needs.

So, be sure to look for a provider who offers flexible pricing models and who can adapt their approach based on your changing needs.

Tip 4: Consider communication.

Communication is important to success when working with a lead generation agency. Look for providers who have clear communication channels and who provide you with regular updates on campaign progress and lead quality.

Work with Nerdy Joe to generate appointments with qualified prospects.

Pay-per-appointment offers you a targeted and cost-effective approach to lead generation. 

At Nerdy Joe, we take the time to discuss your goals and needs and build your ideal customer profile. Our team is only focused on bringing you incredible results. 

We design our process to cut you from long prospecting and meetings and help you close customers easily. 

Here are the perks you get when you work with us:

• Proper prospecting and outreach that’s respective to your brand

• Stellar copywriting and personalized approach to campaigns

• Get results from the first month

• Meetings with sales-qualified leads

• Flexibility to continue or stop based on satisfaction, no contracts