What is Cost Per Meeting?

Cost per meeting is your total outreach spend divided by the number of qualified meetings it produced, over a given period. It cuts through vanity metrics like open and reply rates to answer the question that actually matters: how much does it cost to get a real conversation with a qualified prospect?

Calculating it honestly means including all the inputs — rep or AI costs, tooling, data, and any per-message channel fees — and counting only qualified meetings, not no-shows or bad-fit calls. That's why it pairs naturally with show rate and booked-meeting rate.

Cost per meeting is where AI SDRs tend to look strongest: by automating high-volume first touches, teams can often bring cost per qualified meeting down substantially compared with all-human outbound, though the exact savings depend on your funnel.