An appointment setter is essentially a telemarketer whose aim is to arrange appointments for you or your team to follow up on. They start with a database of contacts, ideally developed from your own lead generation strategies, and phone to arrange an appointment.
They serve as the middle of three stages in your sales process:
Lead generation is an important part of marketing your business, but setting business appointment is an equally important part of actually selling your product or service – especially where you have a more complicated product or service which requires a personal selling approach.
Using a telemarketer to schedule appointments leaves the sales people free to focus on closing sales. Skilled telemarketers are well trained to weed out unqualified prospects or those who are not in a position to buy. Provided they are given the right instructions, they can be used as filters – putting individual prospects into the right groups based on their readiness to buy.
Some prospects will require a sales visit. For others this would be a waste of everyone’s time. A skilled telemarketer can, instead, arrange for further information to be sent to this prospect or move them into a file for future contact.
If your existing database of prospective clients is a little thin, you may consider using a rented or purchased list of contacts. These lists can be tailor made to your industry and target customer. Make sure to buy from a reliable service that has taken the necessary legal precautions in putting together and managing its lists – a good telemarketing company can advise you.
In short, if you want to improve the productivity of your sales efforts, try using an appointment setting service for your next campaign.
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List Building Strategies & Setting Appointments & Telemarketing
If you’re like most businesses you’re probably looking for effective ways to:
Of course getting it right is what counts.
For example, you may need advice and assistance in:
You may want to outsource all your lead generation needs or simply need to get some occasional advice and support when you need it most.
Either way, we can help …
Custom lead generation programs – a full-service solution, from marketing planning and research to site promotion and reporting, we have everything you need to drive sales to your business.
Private Consultancy – One-on-one advice on any aspect of your online marketing strategy or lead generation needs.
Most sales people and entrepreneurs will tell you that they’re good in front of customers. They’re ‘people persons’. “Put me in front of a prospect and I’ll close the sale” is a common statement among salespeople and business owners. In the US, the Small Business Administration (SBA) estimates over 80% of new businesses never reach their fifth year anniversary.
If sales people and business owners say they are great in front of prospects and that they possess the traits of stellar sales people, how can the studies indicate so much failure?
Are the sales people lying?
… No they’re not.
Generating a lead and closing a sale are not the same. When you close a sale you are asking the prospect to make a decision. Making a decision is a commitment. It means risk, responsibility and stress. No matter how smooth and professional you are, closing a sale is stressful for your prospect.
Sales lead generation must be stress-free – the exact opposite of closing a sale. You need to sift through the market and allow all those interested in your offer to stand up and be counted.
Sales lead generation must adopt a soft-sell approach. Your prospect might need something you have for sale. Ideally you want her, someone who doesn’t know or trust you, to step up and introduce herself. No one appreciates being sold – not even salespeople. And without any knowledge of you or your business, every approach will be viewed with skepticism. If you push too hard at this point she’ll run away.
You want your prospect to feel comfortable, relaxed and in control – that means gaining her permission to begin a professional sales relationship. That means offering your prospect a chance to learn more about you without making a commitment. For example, to generate sales leads using a soft-sell approach you could:
Sales lead generation takes time and effort to be effective. Most small business owners don’t have lots of spare time so it should be automated. Your money is made closing sales – not generating leads. You need to automate the lead generating process so you can:
So how can you automate your lead generation process?
If you market online you should consider using an autoresponder. Autoresponders are software programs that allow you to input your contacts, add your sales messages, then program it to automatically email the messages to your list on a schedule you choose.
Set and forget.
Since you decide when to send your messages, you could be on vacation for a week and still have your sales lead generation tactics automatically working for you.
Too many small businesses fail because they don’t manage their lead generation process effectively. Understand the difference between sales and lead generation, make getting in touch with you easy, rewarding and risk free and finally, automate as much as you can.
Follow these three steps and you’ll be able to focus on doing what you do best – dealing directly with new customers and closing the sale.
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Lead generation software?
Generating leads, managing leads and communicating with those leads can be a messy business for small businesses. So how do you keep it all organized? The good news is that new software alternatives mean that small businesses can use PC-based and web-based lead generation software to generate more sales leads and convert more of those leads into paying customers.
Businesses spend small fortunes on attracting prospects to their businesses through advertising and other marketing methods. Unfortunately, not every customer is ready and willing to buy when you reach out to them. In fact, most consumers will need to be contacted several times before they’re willing to take action. This is even more obvious with bigger ticket items or complicated sales.
Keeping your business in front of your prospects can be complicated and time consuming. So, smart businesses use software to automate the process and help them keep an eye on where their business stands. As an example, here are a few lead generation and lead management software solutions you could consider:
2. Email marketing software helps you to send relevant information to those who opt-in. Newsletters, up-to-date news of your products/service, or discount offers can all be effective at motivating future sales.
3. Lead tracking or analytic tools give you a better insight into website visitors’ behavior that will help in planning and tweaking your advertising and website if necessary.
4. With the use of an automated prospecting system, you can easily identify those who are ready to buy now and put the rest on your follow up list.
5. Sales productivity software helps businesses increase profits without necessarily increasing the amount they spend on sales.
6. Using a good sales and marketing software gives you an overview of sales generated compared to the cost of marketing – helping you improve and focus on the best-performing marketing activities.
