Before I talk about appointment setting itself, I need to explain the business model of an online coaching business. The reason for this is that appointment setting is just ONE aspect of a successful online coaching business, and knowing about the business model as a whole will help you better understand your specific role inside the business.

Online Coaching

Coaches are everywhere in our daily lives. They come in the form of personal trainers, music teachers, tutors, vocal coaches, life coaches, finance coaches, dating coaches, etc. Think of ANY skill or improvement someone wants in their life…somewhere there is likely a coach for it!

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a surge in “virtual workspaces”, allowing people to conduct their work or school work online instead of in a face-to-face setting. And while traditional settings do offer the benefit of REAL human contact and connection, virtual spaces offer the advantages of flexibility, accessibility, and the ability to work with people around the world. Because of these advantages, many coaches have taken their businesses online and many more NEW online coaches have entered into the virtual space.

Now, keep in mind that traditional 1-on-1 coaching is typically quite expensive. This is because the individual attention of an expert is so valuable for any prospective student or client. The coach can make a custom, tailor-made blueprint for each client that takes into account their specific strengths, weaknesses, and needs.

Now some online coaches will offer hourly rates for their services. An example would be a language teacher offering $60/hour for each lesson. As an appointment setter, you want to avoid working with coaches, and any business for that matter, with this type of business model. I’ll explain why a bit later.

Instead, you want to work with a coach who offers a high-ticket package. This business model focuses on the transformation of the client rather than charging for coaching sessions. An example would be “Lose 50 pounds in 3 months” or “Become fluent in Spanish in 6 months”. Notice how the coach is selling the transformation or the result instead of the coaching itself. (The book $100 Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No by Alex Hormonzi is a great reference for this.)

The reason you want to work with a high-ticket coach is because their services will cost in the thousands of dollars. $5000 for a coaching package is standard in the industry, and many coaching packages are in the $10,000 - $25,000 range or higher! And the more money the business makes, the more money YOU make as an appointment setter.

The Online Coaching Business Model

So what is the high-ticket online coaching business model? In other words: What is the infrastructure that is in place that allows high-ticket online coaches to consistently make money?

For simplicity, I’m going to break this into four major parts.

Content Platform

Marketing

Acquisition/Sales (appointment setting goes in here!)

Service Delivery

When you think of coaching, you probably just think of the coaching part! But there is a LOT of work that needs to be done before somebody gets their first class or lesson.

These days, a website for an online business simply isn’t enough. If you want to make money online, you need a content platform. A content platform is a social media page where the owner produces content in the form of pictures, blog posts, videos, stories, etc. The purpose of the content is to build authority, interest, and trust in the eyes of the prospective client. Think of the content platform as a storefront in a traditional business. It is the place where prospective buyers walk in, get to know you, and see what you have to offer.

You can have the most amazing content in the world, but it doesn’t matter if no one sees it! Marketing is the magic that brings people to your content platform. You can do this through organic marketing, paid ads, joint venture agreements, word-of mouth, etc. As an appointment setter, you won’t have to worry about marketing at all. But it is VITAL that a business you work for has a proven marketing system that works consistently.

Acquisition/Sales (appointment setting)

So now you have a bunch of prospective clients that are on your content platform. They are hanging out, having a good time, and engaging with your content. Now all you have to do is wait for them to reach out to you and say “Please, for the love of God, take my money!!”.

Well, it’s not quite that easy. Fortunately, this is where the Appointment Setter comes to the rescue.

An Appointment Setter takes prospective clients, who are already on the content platform, and books them onto sales calls with a sales representative. They do not conduct the sales calls themselves, they really only act as the “middleman” between the prospect and the salesman. It’s the equivalent of a sales rep working the floor in a department store: They walk around helping customers and answering questions, but they don’t actually conduct the sale themselves.

Your job as an appointment setter is to open conversations with new followers to the platform and people who have engaged with content using the platform’s direct messaging application. After you start the conversation, you build rapport, answer questions, qualify the prospect, and eventually suggest scheduling them on a call with a sales representative. This is essentially the totality of your duties as an appointment setter. You don’t have to worry about producing content, marketing, doing sales calls, or providing coaching. In fact, you never have to show your face, speak to anyone face-to-face, or even reveal your identity.

Once the appointment setter books a prospective client on a sales call, the next step is for a sales representative (closer) to take the sales call. At the conclusion of the call, the client will either accept a coaching package or decline.

For the client, this is by far the most important part of the business model. This is where the coach delivers their coaching service in virtual sessions. As an appointment setter, you will not be involved in this process whatsoever. Therefore, I won’t go into details about this process.

Let’s tie everything together!

Hopefully you can see that the role of the appointment setter is a very important component of the online coaching business. Without appointment setters, there would be no sales calls, no clients, no sales, NO MONEY.

So appointment setters are compensated based on commissions (sometimes they also have a base salary, but this is not common). Every sales call that an appointment setter books that turns into a sale is anywhere from 5% - 10% commission for the appointment setter, though 5% is more common.

Remember when I said it is important to work for a business that uses a high-ticket business model? The reason is simple:

$5000 = price of coaching package

5% of $5000 = $250

So if you work for a business that has a service with a $5000 sales price, you get $250 for every sale. Now let’s do some simple math.

Let’s say it takes 30 minutes of work to book a prospective client onto a sales call. This is an oversimplification because conversations often take place in parts over days/weeks, but on average it takes about 30 minutes of time in the direct messages with prospects before a call is booked.

Let’s say you want to work 3 hours per day. That means:

3 hours = 180 minutes

180 minutes/30 minutes = 6

So in 3 hours you can expect to book ~6 calls. Therefore everyday you work, you can expect to book 6 calls.

Now the typical work schedule you’re likely used to has 22 working days per month. (Working Monday - Friday, weekends off). Therefore:

22 days x 6 calls/day = 132 calls/month

Now before you get too excited and start counting your money…you need to realize a couple things.

Not everyone who books a call is going to show up.

A conservative estimate would be that 70% of people show up to the calls.

70% of 132 calls = 92 calls

Now 70% is a low estimate, most of the time MORE than 70% of people will show up to the calls. But again, let’s be conservative.

Next, not everyone who goes on a sales call is going to purchase a coaching package. There are MANY factors that determine the closing rate including: the skill and experience and the closer, the presentation of the content platform, the quality of the content, the quality of the offer, etc.

Let’s be conservative again and say the business you’re working for has a 25% close rate. Again, this is low and you can expect this to be higher for most businesses.

25% of 92 calls = 23 sales

Congratulations! 23 sales were closed because of your hard work. So how much money is that?

Assuming a $5000 price for the service, you’ve generated:

23 x $5000 = $115,000

That’s the total revenue for the business. Not bad! And you’re cut? (assuming 5% commission)

5% of $115,000 = $5,750

And remember this is working 3 hours per day, 22 days per month without having to show your face, create content, or speak to anyone! All you are doing is reaching out to people via direct message and booking them on sales calls.

An effective appointment setter is a product of their environment. MORE important than your skill, your work ethic, your determination, your intelligence, is the business you work for. This is because your income is determined by their profitability due to the commission based nature of the role.

You could be the GOAT appointment setter, but if the business you’re working for is only clearing $30,000 in revenue each month, that means you’re taking home $1,500 if you’re the only appointment setter (on 5% commission).

But you may ask: Don’t good appointment setters positively influence sales? The answer is yes, but with a caveat.

Remember that appointment setters are not responsible for creating leads for the business. Therefore, if one appointment setter can handle 30 new leads per day, it would make no sense to hire 5 appointment setters if there are only 20 new leads coming in per day! On the flipside, if there are 250 new leads coming in daily, then 5 appointment setters are going to make a lot more money than just 1!

The point I’m making is that is is IMPERATIVE to your success as an appointment setter to work with an established, profitable, high-quality business. This is what we call a “QBO” or “Qualified Business Opportunity”.

The main criteria for a QBO are as follows:

 -   At least $5,000 price point for product

 -   At least $50,000/month in revenue

 -   Enough qualified leads generated each day for an appointment setter to book at least 5 calls/day

 -   A closing rate in excess of 30%

 -   An established 3 month track record

Having said all of this, the latest numbers suggest that ~97% of online businesses are NOT QBOs! This means that out of the hundreds of thousands of online coaches out there, only 3% are able to support appointment setters making in excess of $5,000 every month.

This largely depends on the individual appointment setter and the business you are working with. That being said, there are a few things that will be consistent no matter where you work.

       1.   You can set your own schedule

 Now this obviously depends on who you work for, but it is very common for the appointment setter to set their own schedule, including days worked and hours per day. Though when you work for a business, make sure you specify if you’d rather work part-time for full-time.

       2.   You can work anywhere in the world

 Appointment setting is a 100% remote job. You only need a phone/laptop and an internet connection. So you can work anywhere and anytime of day you’d like!

      3.   Most of your time will be spent in the DMs.

 This is the majority of the gig. Whether it’s opening the conversation, following up, answering questions, qualifying the lead, or proposing a call, most of your time will be chatting to people online.

      4.   You will need to track your KPIs

 KPIs are Key Performance Indicators. The owner of the business will want to know how many calls you book, how many conversations you started, how many follow ups you did, etc., per day. It is part of your job to track these as you go. (We help you with this in our training!)

     5.   You will need to have self-discipline and organization skills.

 It’s very important that you have enough self-discipline and organization to be consistent with a schedule that you are comfortable with. So if you work 3 hours per day, structure that time so you are working in a consistent way each day! For example

       -    First task: Follow up with leads before their call that day

       -    Second task: Book current hot leads onto calls

       -    Third task: Open conversations with new CTAs

       -    Fourth task: Follow up with leads from previous day

       -    Etc.

By doing this, you’ll soon get into a rhythm and more importantly, you’ll make sure you don’t miss booking a call with any leads that are potentially interested!

      6.   You’ll have daily/weekly meetings with people on your team.

 Your business owner will likely want to have meetings with you to make sure things are going smoothly. These can be daily/weekly and don’t typically take very long. Just make sure you are tracking your KPIs and you’ll be fine!

The rise of the online coaching industry provides a new opportunity for people looking for high-paying, remote work. Appointment setting is an easy to learn skill that can create a LOT of income for you. Appointment setters work in an established business’s social media page and booking leads on sales calls and making 5% - 10% commission per sale. If an appointment setter works with an established, profitable business (aka a QBO), it is expected that the appointment setter would make ~ $5,000 - $10,000 per month.