The Role of Appointment-Setting Agencies in Business Growth
Regardless of size, all companies need to invest in developing a strategy for improving sales – but a strategy alone isn’t enough. Improving sales requires both a targeted strategy and a qualified team that’s committed to following up with prospects and pushing to increase conversion rates. Appointment-setting is a proven sales growth strategy that can help your company generate more high-quality leads that translate to higher conversion rates and lead to increased profit margins. While this may sound simple in theory, successful appointment-setting requires sales expertise, in-depth research, and data-driven strategies. For these reasons and more, companies are increasingly turning to appointment-setting agencies to help them reach their sales goals.
What Are Appointment Setting Agencies?
Many in-house teams simply don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to an effective appointment-setting strategy. That’s where appointment-setting agencies come in. With qualified teams of expert appointment-setters constantly available to meet companies’ needs, appointment-setting services can invest all their time and resources into boosting your sales pipeline and filling your calendar with qualified sales meetings.
Appointment-setters take on several important responsibilities that play a critical role in your sales outcomes. First, they use multiple channels to drive outbound lead generation, perform lead qualification, and conduct extensive research. The results of that research can be used to personalize their approach, formulate data-driven outreach strategies, enhance market research, and more. After researching leads, appointment-setters will reach out and make first contact through various channels such as cold calling, email, or social media. These channels will also be used to nurture leads throughout the appointment-setting process and, ultimately, convince qualified leads to schedule a meeting with a sales rep. This process provides the appointment-setter with valuable information about a prospect’s needs, pain points, and other essential data that can be provided to the sales rep. Armed with this information, the sales rep can customize their approach to the meeting and increase the likelihood of the meeting resulting in a conversion.
Why Businesses Are Turning to Appointment-Setting Companies
With the potential to significantly boost sales pipelines, the appointment-scheduling market has achieved an estimated growth rate of 13.1% between 2019-2026. If you think your sales could use a boost, you might want to consider outsourcing your appointment setting. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons a growing number of companies are opting to hire a business appointment-setting agency.
- Cost-effectiveness
Outsourcing appointment-setting services is a cost-effective option for many companies. Hiring and supporting an in-house team is a time-consuming and expensive process. Once hired, it can often take up to ten months for new SDRs to get entirely up to speed on the company’s culture, sales process, and offering. Combined with the hiring process, this results in almost a year of inconsistent lead generation and fewer appointments scheduled while your SDRs find their footing. Is that something your company can afford? By outsourcing, you have a team of expert SDRs at your fingertips, ready to be immediately onboarded to start bringing in high-quality leads. Outsourcing also saves you money on office space, equipment, and the numerous software licenses required for successful appointment setting. In terms of overall costs, some agencies charge a monthly retainer while others offer pay-per-appointment services; both options are typically more affordable than salaries and benefits for a team of highly-trained SDRs. - High flexibility and scalability
An agency that offers appointment-setting can offer more flexibility and is more easily scalable compared to in-house sales teams. Outsourcing gives you the ability to quickly add or remove already trained, qualified, and experienced SDRs as needed. An outsourced team is able to easily scale and grow in accordance with your ever-evolving needs and gives you the flexibility to make changes to your team without the typical onboarding costs or adjustment period that these changes would usually require. This gives you the ability to respond quickly to any market changes and scale your efforts up or down as needed. - Free up your in-house teams
Not only does using an appointment-setting service improve your outbound strategy, but it allows your in-house teams to be more efficient as well. Rather than spending untold hours wading through dead leads and updating details, sales reps can instead use their time to focus on nurturing qualified leads and closing more deals Outsourcing saves your marketing team from the time-consuming market research process and saves you the time spent on hiring and training an in-house team. This leaves you with more time to focus on important tasks, like growing your business, while you have a reliable and steady team sending a stream of leads into your sales funnel. - B2B appointment setting
B2B sales is a complicated process involving multiple busy decision-makers who are often hard to reach. A majority of decision-makers you’ll interact with have in-depth market knowledge and ask difficult questions that can be challenging for SDRs to answer confidently. For these reasons, a B2B appointment-setting agency can rapidly speed up the B2B sales process. They have access to software, data, and connections that can provide accurate contact information and build effective outreach campaigns. As there is a limited lead pool, lead nurturing is particularly important with B2B sales. Unfortunately, in-house teams don’t always have the time and resources to follow up and properly nurture every qualified lead. Comparatively, an agency has a dedicated team that’s entire purpose is to make sure no leads fall through the cracks. They have the software and expertise needed to track contacts and reach out to the right lead at the right time. - Market research
Due to the amount of research required for successful appointment setting, agencies that specialize in it have access to larger amounts of extensive data that can be used for market research. This information can be used to build data-driven and personalized outreach approaches that have better success rates. Additionally, appointment-setters have plenty of opportunities to speak directly with the target audience. This gives them unique insight into what messaging is working and what’s not, what the target audience is looking for, what their pain points are, and other valuable information that can be shared with the marketing, development, and production teams. This gives you the ability to rapidly respond to what your target audience is looking for, address their needs, and add more leads to your sales pipeline. - Additional Services
Some companies offer other services beyond appointment setting, so if you’re considering outsourcing, don’t forget to ask about their other services. While offerings vary between agencies, services such as cold calling, outbound lead generation, personalization, and lead management can often be combined with appointment setting. Additionally, other appointment-setting agencies offer outsourced SDR services that provide helpful support in times of rapid growth or enable you to easily expand your team temporarily.
Advantages of Hiring an Appointment Setting Company
If you’re considering hiring an appointment-setting company, read on for a list of advantages to outsourcing.
- Faster sales process
Outbound lead generation and qualification are time-consuming and tedious processes. An experienced appointment-setting company already has data and research that can be used to quickly locate leads and build effective outreach strategies that rapidly speed up the sales process. Also, an agency with experience in your industry is likely to already have established connections with relevant leads, making it easier for you to reach decision-makers and drastically cutting down the time between first contact and meeting. - Consistent, high-quality leads
One of the benefits of appointment setting is the steady stream of high-quality leads this strategy generates. But, in a field with notoriously high turnover, an in-house appointment-setting team, may leave you stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of hiring and training while many of your leads dry up. With an outsourced team, you get continuous access to experienced SDRs constantly sending a consistent stream of high-quality leads into your sales funnel. - More sales
The result of a faster sales process and a steady stream of quality leads is that you have more sales opportunities. An effective appointment-setting strategy generates more high-quality leads that, in turn, convert more leads into prospective customers. Delegating this part of the sales process to an outsourced team ensures follow-up with hard-to-reach leads while freeing up your sales reps to focus on closing deals with leads who are already engaged. Altogether, this means more leads in your sales funnel, increased sales conversions, and bigger profit margins. - Lead nurturing
While 80% of sales are made after 5-12 contacts, only 8% of salespeople continue to try and reach out to a lead after five attempts. This is particularly true for B2B sales that involve key decision-makers with busy schedules. If a sales rep is stretched too thin, they don’t have the time to consistently follow up and nurture leads, which may lead them to wrongly assume a hard-to-reach lead is dead. When outsourcing, you have a team of dedicated SDRs who know the value and importance of following up. An appointment setter agency that specializes in appointment setting will also have software that tracks follow-ups and ensures the right leads are contacted at the right time. This ensures every qualified lead is eventually contacted and no leads are left out to dry. - Reach your target market
Your time and resources are valuable. An appointment-setting company can make sure both are well-spent by building data-driven strategies to help you reach your target market. Using real-time analytics, they can also determine which strategies are working and which are not, allowing you to quickly make informed adjustments and avoid putting resources into fruitless campaigns. This allows you to allocate your resources more efficiently and get better results. - Easily expand into new markets
If you’re looking to reach new markets, appointment-setting companies can help you create an effective strategy. With their experience, market research, and access to real-time analytics, an agency can build an efficient plan that wastes no time introducing your product or service to a new market. A top appointment-setting agency can also be advantageous if you’re planning on expanding your operations to new regional or global locations. Internationally active agencies can create data-driven approaches that include any cultural considerations that are relevant to the new market. Additionally, an agency with experience and connections in the new locations can rapidly speed up the expansion process. - Get customized solutions
Every company has a unique set of needs. Professional appointment setters understand this and get to know your existing process so they can offer a customized solution. By understanding your existing process, they can look for innovative changes that will help grow your business and boost your sales success. Many agencies also offer different services such as lead nurturing, lead management, and communication support that can be used to customize solutions for your unique needs. Lastly, depending on the agency, pricing packages may be customizable as well. There are typically options for full-service packages, stand-alone packages, tiered packages, or custom service packages that can be tailored to a company’s unique needs. - Improve data accuracy
It can be difficult to keep your CRM or data records up-to-date and accurate. If your records are inefficient or inaccurate, it’s going to be more challenging to launch an effective outreach campaign. Hiring an appointment-setting service can improve your data as it is standard procedure among agencies is to implement regular and timely data updates to ensure the information is accurate. By ensuring there are regular updates, your team wastes less time wading through inaccurate information and more time talking to prospective clients.
Choosing an Appointment-Setting Company
With such a variety of services offered and different pricing plans, you’re sure to find an appointment-setting company that can meet the unique demands of your company. With their teams of trained and qualified SDRs, agencies are ready to jump into action and find high-quality leads they can bring into your sales funnel.
To learn more about how outsourcing appointment setting can give your sales the boost they need, schedule an introductory call today.
