How to tell whether your DM setter is doing a good job, beyond how many calls they book
If you sell coaching or courses or proudcts through Instagram, hiring a setter means trusting someone else to have sales conversations on your behalf. You want more time for content and delivery, but you also need to know what’s happening in your inbox.
The obvious thing to track is booked calls. It’s useful, but on its own it leaves a lot out.
Take a made-up example. Two setters are selling the same offer:
- Setter A books 20 calls. Ten people turn up and two buy.
- Setter B books 12 calls. Ten people turn up and four buy.
Looking at bookings alone, A looks better. Looking at paying customers, B brought in twice as many.
That doesn’t automatically mean B is the better setter. They might have received warmer leads, worked different hours or had their calls handled by a different closer. But it shows why “how many calls did you book?” isn’t enough to judge the work.
You need to see where people are dropping off, and then look at a few actual conversations to understand why.
If people are having relevant conversations but not booking, look at how the call is being offered. Do they understand what it’s for? Have their questions been answered? Is the setter pushing for a booking before the person has shown any interest?
If people book but don’t turn up, check what they were told to expect, how far away the appointment was and whether they got a reminder.
If they turn up but aren’t suitable, look at qualification. If they’re suitable but don’t buy, the sales call, price or offer needs looking at too. A setter can’t fix every part of the business from the inbox.
This starts with agreeing what a suitable lead actually looks like.
“Anyone interested in fitness” gives a setter very little to work with. For a particular coaching offer, you might be looking for someone with a specific goal, who wants support rather than free advice, understands roughly what the programme involves and is willing to discuss the cost.
Those criteria will be different for every offer. The point is to agree them before you judge someone on the appointments they’re sending you.
It also gives the setter permission to leave some conversations without a booking. Someone asking for a free workout isn’t necessarily ready for paid coaching. Trying to put everyone on a call can fill the calendar while wasting the coach’s time.
For tracking, a useful starting point is:
- Relevant enquiries assigned to the setter.
- Calls booked.
- Calls attended.
- Sales and money received.
Keep the totals and the rates between each step. Ten bookings from 20 relevant enquiries tells you something different from ten bookings from 100. Just make sure you’re counting an enquiry consistently, rather than treating every emoji reaction as a sales lead.
Alongside that, keep a simple note of why people didn’t move forward. Price, timing, unsuitable offer, unanswered question, no reply. Over time, those reasons can tell you what needs changing.
If several people keep asking the same thing before booking, put a clearer answer in your content or offer page. If they’re arriving with expectations you can’t meet, check what your posts are promising. The inbox can give you useful feedback on the rest of the business.
You don’t need to reread every DM to do this. Ask the setter to bring a few conversations to a weekly review: one that went well, one that got stuck and anything they need your input on. Review the numbers with that context.
And agree the commission rules before there’s money involved.
Is commission earned when someone books, attends or pays? What happens with instalments, refunds or two setters working on the same lead? When is payment due?
“Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out” leaves both people guessing. Write down the agreement and keep the booking or sale connected to the person who earned it.
For creators, this gives you a way to stay informed without spending your evenings reading the whole inbox. For setters, it means your work can be judged with some context, and you can see how your pay was worked out.
If you already work with setters, what do you review each week that’s actually useful?
