Appointment setting for B2B companies: Smirnov Consulting Group runs LinkedIn outreach with warm email follow-ups and cold email campaigns, qualification and booking, launching about 15 days after the contract is signed.
Smirnov Consulting Group is a Prague-based B2B outbound lead generation agency that runs cold email and LinkedIn campaigns for founder-led B2B companies and books qualified sales calls. 12 years in outbound, hundreds of B2B companies, 24 countries.
The short version: who answers, what counts, what you see
- Channels: LinkedIn outreach with warm email follow-ups, plus separate cold email campaigns. We do not cold call. Once a prospect replies, the meeting itself runs on Zoom, Microsoft Teams or phone.
- Who answers the replies: on bigger builds, a human inbox manager. Not an autoresponder.
- Qualification rule: agreed with you before launch. A prospect has to match the company and title profile we set together before a call goes into your calendar.
- Handoff: qualified prospects are booked straight into your team's calendar, and your team takes the sales call.
- Reporting: calls booked, calls that actually happened and deals signed, as three separate numbers, next to people contacted and replies. You get a weekly report and a monthly report, plus live notifications every day, and a client portal with live campaign data if you want one.
- Who you talk to: a senior team member assigned to your account, plus a direct line to Artem Smirnov, the founder. Senior experts only: lead generation experts, GTM architects, GTM engineers and AI specialists, with no interns and no juniors doing the work. We keep the number of clients small so each one gets full attention, and we take responsibility for the result. Our people are visible, so you can see who will speak to your prospects before you sign.
- Launch: about 15 days from signed contract. First replies and booked calls often come inside the first 30 days after launch.
- Terms: from USD 3,000 (about EUR 2,500) per month, depending on scope. No minimum contract length, 1 month's notice, and we recommend at least 3 months. See pricing.
A person reads every reply
Replies are where automation should stop. Many of them are not a yes or a no. They are a question, a referral to a colleague, or a "not now, talk to me in March".
So on bigger builds we put a person on the inbox whose whole job is handling replies. That person reads a two-word answer and works out whether it means interested, curious, annoyed or out of office. Then they respond the way a person would.
Getting one reply wrong costs the full price of producing that lead: the domains, the mailboxes, the warm-up, the list, the sequence. There is no undo. A campaign with nobody on the inbox loses more money than a campaign with average copy.
A call gets booked only after it passes the rule
An interested reply is a lead, and a lead is not yet a call. Before anything lands in your calendar, the prospect is checked against the qualification rule in the summary above, which we agree with you before launch.
The company and title profile is set when we build the list: the titles who can sign, the company size you serve, the countries you sell to. The rule stops us from filling your week with curious juniors who can never buy.
Booked, showed and signed are three different numbers
Calls booked is a flattering number on its own. Calls booked, calls that actually happened and deals signed, side by side, is a real one. We report all three, including when the gap is ugly.
When people do not show up, the problem usually sits before the call. Weak confirmations, a long wait before the meeting, or nothing credible to find when the prospect looks you up. Prospects check the profile of whoever will take the call, so your reps' LinkedIn profiles get rebuilt along with the founder's.
When people show up and nothing closes, more volume will not fix it. New calls bring colder, more skeptical buyers, and a weak sales process leaks faster.
Your team takes the call within about a week
Booking and closing are two different jobs. We fill the calendar. Your team runs the sales call.
That only works if someone can take calls within about a week of the booking. A decision-maker booked three weeks out has often forgotten why they agreed. If your calendar is already full, tell us before launch, and we build to a smaller number.
Before the volume arrives, the person on the call should have decided a few things in advance: how this buyer makes decisions, when to present the offer, how to handle the usual objections, and what the follow-up adds. More than once, we have ended up working with a client's sales team on closing, because booked calls nobody converts make the whole campaign look like a failure.
Case: UK B2B company, 8 deals worth $560,000 in 2 months
A B2B company in the UK, targeting buyers in both the UK and the USA.
| Stage | Number |
|---|---|
| Leads | 144 |
| Sales calls booked | 59 |
| Deals closed | 8 |
| Average deal size | $70,000 |
| New revenue | $560,000 |
All of it in 2 months, with more of those leads expected to convert over the following 2 to 3 months.
Read the table from top to bottom. 144 leads became 59 calls, and 59 calls became 8 deals. Each line is a different number, and the gap between them is where the work sits: reply handling and qualification between the first two, your sales process between the last two. It works when the market needs what you sell and your team can deliver.
Full story: UK B2B company, 8 deals worth $560,000.
Not a fit if
- Nobody can take a new sales call within about a week of it being booked.
- Your sales process does not convert at small numbers yet. More calls will make that worse.
- You cannot answer call-ready leads within 24 hours or stay in touch with us. On a 12-month engagement we guarantee the results we agree with you up front and refund the full fee you paid us if we miss them, and that works only when both sides do their part.
- You have no proven offer. We are in the lead generation space, not the building-businesses-from-zero space.
Questions buyers ask about appointment setting
Do you make phone calls, or only send emails and LinkedIn messages?
We do not cold call. Prospecting runs on LinkedIn with warm email follow-ups and on separate cold email campaigns. The phone comes in only after a prospect replies and agrees to meet: the sales call itself can run on Zoom, Microsoft Teams or phone, whichever your team and the prospect prefer.
How do you decide whether to lead with cold email or LinkedIn first?
We usually open on LinkedIn, because prospects who have seen your face show up more often. In one 30-day campaign from a single LinkedIn account, 16 prospects booked a call and 12 showed up. One campaign proves little on its own, but it matches what we see elsewhere. Cold email then adds volume after two or three weeks, since one LinkedIn profile reaches only about 2,800 people a month.
What counts as a booked call versus just a lead?
A lead is an interested reply. A booked call is a lead that passed the qualification rule we agree with you and accepted a time in your calendar. In the UK case above, 144 leads turned into 59 booked calls. We report both, plus how many calls happened and how many deals were signed, so you can see where prospects drop out.
Do you handle scheduling and calendar invites for booked calls?
Yes. Once a prospect is qualified, we book the time directly into your team's calendar. You do not chase anyone for a slot. What we need from you is calendar space and someone who can take the call within about a week, because a meeting booked three weeks out tends to go cold.
What happens after a call is booked, and do you help with follow-up?
Your team takes the call and owns the follow-up, and we track whether the call happened and whether it closed. The calls keep paying after the month ends. In high-ticket B2B, calls that produced nothing at the time often turn into contracts in the months after. A "not this year" in March is a warm, informed buyer in November, but only if someone writes it down and calls back.
How many booked calls typically turn into paying clients?
That depends more on your sales process than on the booking. The benchmark we use: a closing ratio above 20% is healthy for a high-ticket B2B service. If you are far below that, the fix is the sales process, and more calls will only widen the leak. High-ticket deals also close slowly, so judge closing over months.
How long should we give appointment setting before judging it?
At least 3 months, which is what we recommend. There is no minimum contract and the notice period is 1 month, but outbound needs time to get feedback, adjust and improve, and the industry average to get it fully working is about 6 months. Attribution matters too. B2B sales cycles often run 6, 9 or 12 months. Calls can come in the first month, while the deals from those calls may close 4 months later or more. Judging outbound on month one's signed contracts measures the wrong thing.
Related
- Pricing
- Case studies
- Cold email agency
- LinkedIn outreach agency
- Industries we book calls for: construction companies, civil engineering companies, industrial and manufacturing companies, financial advisory firms, software development companies, SEO agencies, business coaches and consultants
- How outbound works FAQ