The Best Sales Appointment Setting Tips and Techniques
Sales appointment setting is an important part of any sales process. It is the bridge between prospecting and closing a deal, and when done right, it’s vital to help your business grow.
In this article, we’ve put together a helpful guide to ensure you make the most of your appointment-setting efforts.
Understanding Sales Appointment Setting
Appointment setting is a sales approach to finding new leads for potential customers and scheduling meetings between those qualified leads and sales reps. Essentially, appointment setting is what connects lead generation to the rest of the sales process. Depending on the sales approach, these meetings can be scheduled in person, via Zoom, over the phone, or by email.
Prior to scheduling a meeting, the lead needs to be qualified. SDRs (sales development representatives usually responsible for appointment setting) use sales prospecting strategies to gather potential leads that seem like a good fit for your product or service. They then research each lead to determine how the script can be modified and personalized to the lead’s specific company needs and pain points. Once the SDR communicates with the lead, they can continue with the qualification process by assessing their relevance, interest level, how ready they are to buy, and other important information that will help the sales team close the deal. Once the lead is determined to be qualified, the SDR then needs to communicate the company’s USP and get them interested in hearing more.
Appointment-setting services can benefit your company in numerous ways. Instead of your sales team making multiple phone calls just to reach one prospect, the right appointment-setting firm will have the right insight and data to get you in front of your target market more efficiently. Additionally, companies that offer sales appointment-setting services can nurture leads for you until they’re ready to buy. This results in improved lead quality and more qualified appointments, which improves your sales team’s effectiveness and efficiency. All these factors combined allow your company to strengthen its sales pipeline and, most importantly, increase revenue.
Best Practices for Sales Appointment Setting
To close a deal, you must first get a prospective client to agree to the initial meeting, which can be a challenging task. To help you improve your company’s activity-to-appointment ratio, we’ve put together a list of ten best practices for how to set more appointments in sales.
1. Research, research, research
Take the time to show potential leads how much you value them by knowing relevant information about their industry and organization prior to contacting them. Know their company’s purpose and identify how your product can benefit them. Use sources such as their social media and website, industry news publications, or research data to prepare before you pitch.
2. Know who you need to talk to
To successfully sell your service or product to a company, you need to reach the decision-makers. Keep in mind that you may often need to go through gate-keepers before reaching the decision-makers, so treat them with respect and build rapport with them as well.
3. Build relationships
It’s hard to build trust or a solid foundation in a single phone call, so view your first few conversations as a stepping stone. By sounding warm and approachable, leads will be more willing to speak with you again if you’re unable to schedule an appointment with them upon initial contact. Many leads need some time to warm to a new product or expenditure; focusing on building relationships can help convince them to schedule an appointment in the future.
4. Be patient
Appointment setting can often require playing the long game. Not every lead is ready to move forward the first time they’re contacted. Instead of seeing it as a refusal, see it as the first step in building your relationship. Stay positive and make multiple attempts at securing an appointment with the same prospective clients. This is one of the reasons that SDRs dedicated to appointment setting are needed, since it requires multiple outreach attempts and building long-term relationships to get results.
5. Prepare an efficient pitch
Knowing what you’re going to say displays professionalism and can increase your chances of successfully scheduling an appointment. Know the benefits of your product or service and be prepared with your company’s mission statement and values. Before calling, review sales scripts and case studies so you can show the client how your service or product can benefit them. Know your script well enough to be able to adjust it naturally in a conversation and avoid sounding like you’re reading a script.
6. Be flexible and expect challenges
Things don’t always go the way they were planned, which is especially true with appointment setting. You will face challenges while trying to secure appointments but use those challenges as opportunities to understand the client better. Anticipating these changes and challenges will help you be more prepared and, as a result, more effective.
7. Listen to your leads
Don’t jump straight into your offer as soon as a lead picks up the phone. Spend a few minutes asking about their company’s goals so you can identify their values and what is important to them. This is information you can use to help explain why they should schedule an appointment and is also useful intel you can pass on to the sales rep to prepare them for the meeting.
8. Focus on the appointment, not the product
The goal of appointment setting is to get meetings scheduled, not to sell the product or service itself. It’s important to build a relationship with the client but don’t lose focus on what you’re there to do.
9. Sell the appointment to the client
The leads you contact are busy; you need to convince them why they should give some of their precious time to your company. Leave the details about the product or service to the sales rep to give during the meeting and focus on convincing the client of how the meeting will benefit them.
10. Ask directly and don’t hesitate to reschedule
If you’re intimidated by a high-profile client you’re contacting, beating around the bush will not only waste time but will confuse the client. Be clear about the purpose of the conversation and ask them directly to schedule a meeting. Once scheduled, those meetings can occasionally fall through for various reasons that may not reflect the client’s level of interest. If a meeting falls through, call the client and do what you can to get them back on the calendar.
Tips for Successful Sales Appointments
A lot of work goes into a successful appointment-setting strategy that facilitates the transfer of a lead to a meeting with a sales rep. While every stage of the sales funnel has its own challenges, sales appointment setting serves as the first hurdle to closing deals. To save you time and resources, here are some appointment-setting tips to set you up for success.
1. Focus on your goals
Your goal is not to lock down a sale right away but to get the lead to agree to a meeting and to provide information to the sales rep for said meeting. Record as many details as possible to make for an easy transition to the sales rep and focus on activities that contribute small wins toward the big-picture goal.
2. Know your leads and what they need
Intruding on a prospective client’s time with no understanding of who they are or their unique needs won’t bring you much success. By getting a clear picture of your ideal customer profile (ICP), you can build an effective strategy for approaching leads and explaining the value your solution has to offer.
3. Confirm their availability
When you first contact potential clients, don’t assume they are free to talk. Show them you value their time by asking if they have a few minutes to speak with you. When a lead is too busy, you can ask when it will be more convenient for them to talk. When that happens, it’s important to add a reminder to your CRM, or whatever system you’re using, so that you call that lead when they asked.
4. Give your elevator pitch
Once the prospective client has agreed to speak with you, start by giving them a rehearsed pitch that describes your product or service and how it addresses their primary pain points. Keep it short, to about one or two sentences, but make sure to clearly convey how your product or service is the right solution for their company. The tricky part is making it sound like a natural conversation and not a pitch. This can be done by dividing the pitch into a very short overview covering the most important part and additional information provided after the lead shows a bit of interest, asks questions, etc. Ideally, you’ll want to practice this a lot or hire an experienced SDR. You’ll also want to work with a professional copywriter to get the messaging to be short and precise.
5. Move from problems to a proposition
Once you have given your elevator pitch, inquire about the problems you know the company is facing that you uncovered during your research. By getting them to acknowledge the problems they have, you prepare them to accept your offering as the solution. Use these problems to transition to your value proposition by providing a brief summary of your solution and how it fits their needs. Once they show interest, ask them to schedule a meeting so they can learn more from the sales rep or executive.
B2B Sales Appointment Setting Techniques
Selling to businesses can be quite complex as it requires you to navigate the sales process with multiple decision-makers and influencers that make up a company’s buying committee. These decision-makers also tend to be well informed with in-depth market knowledge of product options before they ever speak with a sales rep. Due to these factors and the high risk involved with these purchases, B2B appointment setting is no easy task. To help you set more appointments in sales, here are some B2B appointment-setting tips.
1. Use a sales intelligence provider
This will give you access to the necessary information and data about your prospective clients. Information provided by these services includes company demographics, confirmed email addresses, direct phone numbers, opportunity insights, competitor information, and tech stacks. Being able to access this information quickly will make it easier for your sales reps to be informed when reaching out to decision-makers.
2. Prepare and respect the client’s time
Being organized and prepared when contacting leads lends credibility and reliability. Know what you’re going to say and be prepared for common sales objections. Show you respect the client’s time by remaining flexible and willing to schedule another time to talk. Also, be sure to reply quickly to any inquiries following the original conversation to avoid giving the prospective client any hesitations about working with you.
3. Listen so you can be a problem solver
Listen to prospective clients’ problems and priorities so that you can offer them a solution to those problems. By listening to the client, you can identify their problems and pain points that you can then use to guide the sales process strategy.
4. Use referrals to speed up the process
Referrals are an easy way to speed up the appointment-setting process. Referrals show prospective clients the trust the referee has in your product or services and allow you to skip ahead in the process of building a relationship.
5. Don’t reconfirm, remind
If you’ve scheduled an appointment with a B2B decision-maker a week or two away, don’t ask them if the meeting is still on. Asking prospective clients if they still want to have the meeting gives them the chance to reconsider. Instead, send them a reminder of the date and time that you agreed on.
By following these best practices, tips for appointment-setting sales calls, and B2B appointment-setting techniques, your company can build a more efficient sales process that leads to increased revenue.
For more information on how sales appointment-setting services can help your company meet its goals, schedule an introductory call today!
