your setter isn't underperforming, you are
(the mirror test that saves the hire)
You remember the day you hired them.
You’d just closed two deals in one week and missed your kid’s game for the second time that month. The math finally made sense… get someone on the conversations, buy back your calendar, scale past your own phone.
You found someone hungry, agreed on an amount, and told your partner the inbound problem was finally handled.
Month 3. 4 booked calls.
You’ve got the Slack message half-drafted... the one about “revisiting expectations.”
Professional. Fair, even. Your finger’s been hovering over send since Tuesday.
But, before you send it, look at what you actually handed them on day one…
A login.
A Google Doc with bullet points from a course you bought in 2023.
A pile of leads with no context on who they are, where they came from, or why they raised their hand.
There’s no objection bank anywhere in the operation. Nobody ever set a speed standard. And nothing on paper defines what a qualified call even is.
Now you’re measuring their failure against a number you don’t even know exists.
You didn’t hand them a system. I mean, you yourself never had one.
YOU closed on instinct.
You knew which leads were real because you’d already talked to 400 of them, and you handled “let me think about it” differently every time.
And it worked, because you walked into every conversation carrying context and authority a new hire starts without. None of it was written down. It never needed to be when you were the one doing everything.
Then you hired, handed over a job description, while keping the ACTUAL job in your head. The only thing your setter inherited was … your inbox.
Your setter is a mirror. Those numbers are your system’s output, running for the first time without you.
You were too close to see the kinks in the system because for years, you were the system.
I can tell you what the other side looks like, because I live there.
I’ve manned setting for some of the biggest programs in this space, and here’s what needs to land before me or my team ever touch a lead:
→ where they came from and what they clicked
→ their quiz/application answers, so we open knowing their goal in their own words
→ catalog of the objections that actually occur, tested across tons of conversations
→ a definition of what counts as a {qualified} booked call
That’s how an elite operation protects its investment. That whole stack is the job’s oxygen, and most setters are working without it.
So run the mirror test before the termination. Five questions:
1️⃣ Could you book from what they have?
Sit in the seat, leave your twenty years of reps at the door, and work ten leads using only their toolkit. If you’d struggle, what exactly did you expect?
2️⃣ Do the top five objections have written, tested replies?
“I’m already working with someone.”
“Send me some info.”
“What’s this cost?”
If your setter is improvising those in real time, every conversation is a coin flip you’re paying salary on.
3️⃣ What’s the standard from hand-raise to first touch... minutes, or “when they get to it”?
Interest decays by the hour. If nobody defined the window, your leads are dying of old age before the first message.
(There’s some nuance to this I’ll discuss in a future newsletter tho).
4️⃣ Does each lead arrive with a who and a why-now, or a bare name in a CRM of some sort (app, Google sheet, Airtable etc).
Context is the difference between “hey, saw you grabbed the pricing guide Tuesday” and “hey, just following up.” Only one of those gets answered.
5️⃣ Is “booked call” defined anywhere, or does every calendar slot count the same?
If the scoreboard is vague, so is everything feeding it.
Three or more no’s means the problem was never your setter.
The system (or lack thereof) is the problem, and firing them restarts the same movie with a new actor that knows nothing about the production.
Run the cost of that sequel…
Six weeks to find the replacement. Two more to ramp.
Payroll running the whole time, plus every lead that hits a dead inbox during the gap.
Call it $4,000 to $5,000 and two months of pipeline, spent to arrive at the exact same dashboard, because the mirror doesn’t care who’s standing in front of it.
Now the two branches, because the test always ends in one of them.
Branch 1️⃣: If it’s the system, this week’s rebuild order is short.
→ Write the lead context card… source, click, why-now, one personal detail.
→ Build the objection bank from conversations you’ve already had. The replies exist in your sent folder, they’ve just never been collected. Set the speed standard in numbers.
→ Post the qualified-call definition in Slack, one sentence.
→ Review 5 conversations with your setter every Friday. Same time. No exceptions.
That’s the whole machine you never built, and it takes a week.
Branch 2️⃣: If the test comes back skill... the tools exist and the transcripts show them being ignored... then you make the call cleanly, with evidence instead of vibes, and the next hire walks into a system that works on day one instead of month never.
Either way, you owe your setter one conversation before anything else…
Here’s what I didn’t give you, here’s what changes Monday, here’s the one number we watch together. Hardest message you’ll send this month. Also the one that makes you the operator they’d run through a wall for.
Reply to this post with numbers from your setter’s last week: sends, replies, booked.
One look and I’ll tell you whether it’s system or skill.
Most readers will nod at this and re-send the same setter the same broken tools.
Rainmakers rebuild the system by Friday with today’s paid member skill:
→ paste your setter’s last ten conversations
→ get the verdict with evidence quoted from the transcripts
→ the missing-tool list ranked by booked-call impact
→ the top-five objection replies rewritten in your voice
→ plus the exact message to send your setter tomorrow
Every 8am in Atlanta issue teaches you the strategy.
Rainmakers get the strategy as a loaded skill... the prompt PLUS the context file, wired to YOUR offer, voice, and proof.
One new skill every issue (minimum twice a week). Useable in ANY llm (Claude, ChatgPT, Manus etc)
Readers take notes. Rainmakers book calls.
