How much does a meeting cost you?
Enter your team, your tools and your rates. Get the cost of a booked and a held meeting, its breakdown, and what your dialing mode changes. Every assumption can be edited.
The real number, not a feeling
Your assumptions
Results update with every change
The team
Who prospects, and what it costs each month.
SDRs, BDRs or AEs, part-time included.
Base, variable, employer costs, benefits: the full cost to the company.
Calls, prep, CRM entry, follow-ups. The rest of their time is left out of the cost.
Conversations with the right person, over dials. The same rate applies to all three modes.
Tools and data
Licences and lists dedicated to prospecting.
Telephony, dialer, data, sequences: everything used to prospect.
For the whole team. Leave 0 if you buy none.
Activity
Your calling pace and the rates you see in your CRM.
Per rep, time actually spent on the phone, dialing included.
Days actually spent prospecting.
Meetings booked, over conversations.
Meetings held, over meetings booked.
With wrap-up time, it caps the conversations a rep can hold in an hour.
Notes, CRM entry, a breath before the next call.
Down to the customer
Optional: from the meeting to the acquisition cost.
Customers signed, over meetings held.
Average deal size or first-year value, however you track it.
Results updated: $72.75 per held meeting.
Your cost per meeting
Per month, with your assumptions
per booked meeting
$54.56
151 meetings booked per month
per held meeting
$72.75
113 meetings held per month
Where the cost comes from
Your monthly prospecting budget and how it splits.
$8,250 per month
Loaded salaries
91%
$7,500
Licences
5%
$450
Data
4%
$300
per dial
$0.65
per conversation
$8.18
per signed customer
$364
What your numbers say
- Salaries drive 91% of your cost per held meeting: it is your reps’ time that costs, not the tools. Each held meeting comes to $72.75.
- Out of 180 h of calling a month, about 113 h go by outside conversations: dialing, ringing, voicemails, wrong numbers. That is 63% of calling time.
- Every month, 38 booked meetings do not take place. They cost exactly the same: a reminder the day before is often the cheapest lever.
- The most effective lever among those tested: +1 calling hour per day per rep, which moves the cost per held meeting by -25%.
Your month, link by link
Monthly volumes derived from your assumptions.
- 1
180 h
calling hours
- 2
12,600
dials
- 3
1,008
conversations
- 4
151.2
meetings booked
- 5
113.4
meetings held
- 6
22.7
customers signed
Customer acquisition cost
$364
Customer value / acquisition cost
×16.5
A ratio above 3 is often targeted, but the right threshold depends on your margin and customer lifetime.
What if you changed dialing mode?
Same team, same budget, same connect rate: the comparison only measures the dialing pace and saturation.
By hand
48
meetings booked / month
$174
per booked meeting
At constant budget: 48 meetings instead of 151
For the same meetings: 393 h more prospecting per month
Power dialer
Your current mode
151
meetings booked / month
$54.56
per booked meeting
Parallel dialer
295
meetings booked / month
$28.01
per booked meeting
Reps saturated: the gain reads in hours freed
At constant budget: 295 meetings instead of 151
For the same meetings: 88 h of prospecting freed per month
Licences are the same for all three modes by default: if the dialer costs more, refine them by mode under tools and data. When a mode saturates your reps, extra meetings are capped by their conversation time: the real gain is the time freed, to reinvest in preparation, follow-up or other channels.
The levers, one at a time
The effect of each improvement on the cost per held meeting, at constant budget. Same step for every rate: +10% relative.
Connect rate +10%
8% → 8.8% · 124.7 meetings held / month
$66.14 per held meeting
-9%Conversation-to-meeting rate +10%
15% → 16.5% · 124.7 meetings held / month
$66.14 per held meeting
-9%Show rate +10%
75% → 82.5% · 124.7 meetings held / month
$66.14 per held meeting
-9%+1 calling hour per day per rep
3 h → 4 h, that is +33% · 151.2 meetings held / month
$54.56 per held meeting
-25%
Share this calculation
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Summary preview
Cost per meeting (3 reps, power dialer, connect rate 8%) • Booked meeting: $54.56 (151 / month) • Held meeting: $72.75 (113 / month) • Conversation: $8.18 · Dial: $0.65 • Monthly budget: $8,250, of which 91% salaries • Acquisition cost: $364 (customer value / CAC: ×16.5) • Parallel dialer, same team and budget: 295 meetings instead of 151, or 88 h of prospecting freed per month for the same meetings Details and assumptions: … Calculated with Skipcall’s cost per meeting calculator. Assumptions entered by the user, not market averages.
Bring that number down. Skipcall dials up to four numbers at once, chains calls without dead time and summarises every conversation. Same team, more meetings.
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What cost per meeting is, and why measure it
Cost per meeting is your monthly prospecting budget divided by the number of meetings obtained in the month. It is the metric that links an outbound team’s activity to its commercial result: it says what the company actually pays to put a qualified prospect in front of a salesperson. It comes in two versions that should not be confused: cost per booked meeting, and cost per held meeting, always higher since some booked meetings never take place.
Measuring it changes decisions. A team that knows its cost per meeting knows whether an extra channel, a purchased list or a dialer licence is worth it: compare the cost of the spend with the meetings it brings. It also knows where to look when the number rises: call volume, connect rate, conversion to meetings or show rate. Without that number, the discussion stays at the level of impressions.
This calculator applies a simple chain: calling hours, conversations, dials, meetings booked, meetings held and, if you wish, customers signed. The monthly budget is divided by each of these links, which also gives the cost per dial, per conversation and the customer acquisition cost. Every starting value is an assumption, to be replaced with your own.
Fully loaded cost, and why it weighs so much
The first item in cost per meeting is almost always your reps’ time. To count it properly, start from the fully loaded cost: base salary, variable pay, employer costs, benefits and everything the company pays to have someone in the seat. This full cost varies widely from one country and city to another, which is why the tool asks for it rather than estimating it: you will find it in your accounts or with your payroll team.
Only the share of time spent prospecting enters the calculation. A rep who prospects half the time and manages accounts the rest costs prospecting only half of their loaded cost. That share includes calls, but also list preparation, CRM entry and follow-ups: everything that would not exist without phone prospecting.
Once that item is set, the question becomes: how many meetings does that time produce? This is where calling pace matters. By hand, a rep dials a number, waits, often reaches voicemail, takes a note, dials again. A power dialer chains numbers without dead time; a parallel dialer dials several at once and only hands over when someone answers. The cost of the hour does not change; the number of conversations in the hour does.
Booked meeting, held meeting: two numbers, two uses
Cost per booked meeting measures the efficiency of prospecting itself: what it costs to obtain agreement for a conversation. It is the number to follow to manage the outbound team, compare two lists, two scripts or two dialing modes. It is also the more flattering one.
Cost per held meeting measures what matters to the company: conversations that actually happened and can lead to a sale. The gap between the two comes from the show rate. A meeting pushed through, poorly qualified or set too far out in the calendar is more likely not to happen, and it cost exactly the same as a solid one.
Tracking both side by side avoids a classic trap: a team that improves its cost per booked meeting by accepting shakier meetings sees its cost per held meeting deteriorate. The tool shows both and counts the booked meetings that do not take place each month: a reminder the day before, a confirmation email or stricter qualification are often the cheapest levers.
Comparing dialing modes without kidding yourself
The comparison block holds the team, the budget, the conversion rate, the show rate and, by default, the connect rate constant: a single rate, 8%, applies to all three modes, and only the number of dials per hour changes from one mode to another. If you see a different rate depending on the tool, as this site does, the “Refine the connect rate by mode” button lets you set each one, and the comparison takes it into account. The result reads two ways: the number of meetings the same team would obtain in the month at constant budget, and the number of prospecting hours it would free to obtain the same meetings as today.
The default paces, 20 to 25 dials per hour by hand, 60 to 80 with a power dialer, 150 to 200 with a four-line parallel dialer, are what we observe with our customers. They assume a sound list of numbers: a degraded database drags the return down whatever the tool. They are working assumptions, not promises, and you can replace them with your own measurements.
A safeguard prevents absurd results: a rep cannot hold more conversations per hour than their time allows, that is sixty minutes divided by the length of a conversation plus wrap-up time. When a fast mode exceeds that cap, the tool says so: the reps are saturated, and the real gain is no longer in extra meetings but in hours freed, to reinvest in preparation, follow-up or other channels. By default, licences are the same for all three modes: if the dialer costs more, the “Refine licences by mode” button lets you enter each one, and the comparison takes it into account.
How to measure your rates in your CRM
The calculator is only as good as its inputs. Four rates are enough, and each can be read in a properly maintained CRM or telephony tool. Take a full month, or better a quarter, to smooth out slow weeks.
- 1
Connect rate
Count the calls where you spoke to the person you were after, not a switchboard or a voicemail, and divide by the number of dials over the period. Most telephony tools label the outcome of each call: make that label mandatory and use it.
- 2
Conversation-to-meeting rate
Divide the number of meetings created in the CRM by the number of conversations in the same period. Count only meetings accepted by the prospect, not “call back later” or scheduled follow-ups.
- 3
Show rate
Divide the meetings that actually took place by the meetings booked. This requires a “held” or “no-show” status on every meeting in the CRM, filled in afterwards: it is the most often forgotten field.
- 4
Close rate and customer value
Divide signed deals by the held meetings that preceded them, allowing for your sales cycle. For customer value, take the measure you already track: average deal size, first-year value or lifetime value. What matters is keeping it consistent from one calculation to the next.
The mistakes that skew the calculation
-
Counting net or gross salary instead of fully loaded cost
A rep’s real cost to the company goes well beyond what they see on their payslip. Leaving out employer costs, variable pay and benefits understates the first item of cost per meeting, sometimes by a third or more depending on the country.
-
Counting booked meetings rather than held meetings
A meeting that does not take place cost the same as a held one and produced nothing. Tracking only booked meetings encourages booking shaky ones. Track both.
-
Ignoring dialing time
Between two conversations, a rep dials, waits, listens to a voicemail, takes a note, dials again. By hand, that time is most of a calling hour. Counting it as productive time hides the true cost of a conversation.
-
Measuring over a week
A good or bad week can double or halve a small team’s conversion rate. Take a full month, or a quarter, and refresh the calculation whenever you change list, script or tool.
-
Forgetting costs that are not licences
Purchased lists, data enrichment, extra numbers and sequencing tools are prospecting costs just like telephony. If they are billed for the whole team, enter them under “data or list purchases”.
Going further
The pages behind this calculator’s assumptions.
- Power dialer Chain calls without dead time, one number after another.
- Parallel dialer Dial up to four numbers at once and only hand over when someone answers.
- Pricing The cost of a licence per rep, to enter in your assumptions.
- How many calls does your target take? The calculation the other way round: start from a target and get the calls and hours needed.
- All free tools Phone number validator, calling windows, VoIP test and more.
How to check that your figures never leave your browser
The calculation is done by code running in your browser: your salaries, rates and volumes are sent neither to Skipcall nor to anyone else. The tool stores nothing, not even in the browser’s local storage. The page address stays clean while you type: the share link, which carries your assumptions, is only built when you click “copy the link”, and you decide who to send it to.
The simplest test: once the page has loaded, cut your connection (airplane mode or Wi-Fi off) and change a value. The results keep updating, since they need no server.
In your browser’s Network tab you will see the site’s audience measurement tools, as on all our pages. None of them receives the content of your fields: the tool area is excluded from session recording, the address they send does not contain your assumptions, and only clicks on “copy” are counted, without their content.
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