Scheduling for agencies that only take briefs above a floor
An agency's constraint is not leads. It is the founders' calendar, and the founders are usually the ones on the call.
So the discovery call has a floor, and everybody knows what it is. The problem is where the floor gets applied: ten minutes into a call that is already happening, by somebody who now has to end it politely. That is a bad half hour for both people, and it happens because the booking form asked nothing and the calendar said yes.
The fix is the order. Ask about spend before you show availability, and the meetings you take are the ones you would have taken anyway.
What the form asks
- Current monthly ad spend
- $30,000 to $75,000
- Channels you're running
- Meta, TikTok, AppLovin
- Are you the budget decision maker?
- Yes
The rule that runs first
monthly_ad_spend in [under_5k, 5k_15k] → block
How the score is weighted
- Budget fit×3.0
- Urgency×2.0
- Channel fit×1.5
The floor is spend. Every booking under it costs both partners half an hour they were never going to bill.
Worth doing the sum
What one under-floor call costs an agency
Every input is on the page so you can put your own numbers in. Nothing here is a study, an average, or a claim about anybody's results.
- Partners on the call
- 2
- Call length
- 30 minutes
- Prep and context switching, each
- 15 minutes
- Blended billable rate
- $150 per hour
Two people, forty-five minutes each, is an hour and a half. At $150 an hour that is $225 of billable time for a brief you were always going to decline. Four of those a month is $900, and four a month is a slow month.
Substitute your own rate. The number that matters is not the one above, it is how many of last month's calls you would not have taken if you had known.
About twenty minutes
Setting it up, in order.
- 1
Add a spend band question with the lowest option below your floor, so choosing it honestly is easy rather than a negotiation.
- 2
Set the rule: anything in the two bands under your floor is blocked, with a message you write. Most agencies send a resources link and an invitation to come back.
- 3
Add both partners as hosts on the discovery event type as collective, so availability is the times you are both actually free and the invite has both of you on it.
- 4
Weight the score: spend heaviest, then urgency, then channel fit. The score is for you, never shown to the booker.
- 5
Watch the declined log for a fortnight. If it is turning away briefs you would have taken, the floor is one band too high.
Read next
Qualify leads before they book, not after
Screening questions that run after the slot is taken cost you the meeting anyway. Here is how to put qualification in front of the calendar instead.
Questions
What agencies ask first.
Does asking about budget first lose good clients?
It loses the ones who would not answer a budget question, and whether that overlaps with the ones who would have signed is a question about your agency rather than about scheduling. For most agencies the overlap is small. It is not zero, and it is worth watching the declined log rather than assuming.
Can I have a different floor for referrals?
From the Team plan, yes: rules and forms attach at the event type, so a referral link and a cold inbound link can be two event types with different floors. On Pro the form and the rules are one set across the workspace, and the way to do this is to leave the referral event type ungated rather than to give it a second floor.
Do both partners have to accept every booking?
On a collective event type, which is on every plan, Setupp only offers times you are both free, and both of you are full attendees on the one event, so both get asked. If you would rather either partner take it, that is round-robin: it offers any time one of you is free and puts one host on each meeting, and it starts on the Team plan.
Same machinery
Different inputs, same product.
Setupp does not ship an opinion about what a good booking looks like. It ships the gate, the score and the invite, and you set the floor.
Stop taking calls you would have declined.
Connect a calendar, write the five questions you already ask on every call, and set the floor you already have in your head. About twenty minutes. Then never spend another Tuesday afternoon finding out about a mismatch.
One host free, forever. No card, no sales call to get a trial.
- 01Multi-recipient invitesfrom Pro
- 02Qualification before the calendarfrom Pro
- 03A score on every booking
- 04An embed that inherits your brandfrom Pro