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.
We do it for you:If you need help designing a marketing tool that promotes or sells your products or services online, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide.
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report
Go to Lead Generation Techniques
Back to Lead Generation Home
List Building Strategies & Setting Appointments & Telemarketing
Can Telemarketing Services Really Increase Sales?
Telemarketing services can help improve sales and increase leads generation,but you probably don’t want to turn your business into a call center.
Inbound Marketing Calls
In most cases the telemarketing that you’ll be considering will be outbound (i.e. you contacting the customer) as opposed to inbound (them contacting you). However, if you are not prepared to handle inbound calls, you may be wasting your hard-won marketing dollars. So you should train and prepare your staff to handle inbound calls effectively and keep them up-to-date with the marketing efforts that may lead to calls.
You may choose to incorporate phone contact into your current advertising, which may include:
Using a dedicated, toll-free number can be a great way to encourage prospects to get in touch, but your staff needs to be ready and prepared to handle those calls, answer questions and effectively funnel these initial leads into your sales strategy. For example, your advertising could promote a free report that customers can claim via a phone number.
Each call therefore represents a qualified, interested prospect, motivated to lift the phone.
Outbound Telemarketing
Outbound telemarketing (you contacting the customer) can be an effective tool in either:
A follow up call after a direct mail campaign can increase the open rate and also increase the number of sales. Outbound telemarketing also gives you the opportunity to up-sell your existing customers or target them with special offers.
Outsource or In-house Telemarketing
Few business owners look forward to getting on the phone and cold calling prospects (or even calling warm leads). It’s not surprising then that an industry has grown up to handle telemarketing services for small businesses. But hiring a telemarketing company is not an inexpensive exercise.
With that in mind, a good rule of thumb is for small businesses to avoid outsourcing telemarketing services- except where the value of a new client hits at least four figures.
For most businesses however, telemarketing will be done internally.
If it’s your own list, then the purpose of your call should be two-fold. Ideally you’ll have a product or service that you would like to sell.
If you have bought or rented your list then you can add an alternative goal: get them to agree to join your mailing / contact database. This will allow you to market to them again in the future.
Of course, you never started your business to become a telemarketer so ask yourself whether or not this is the best way to spend your time. If it isn’t, and you can afford to bring in some help, do so.
We do it for you: Need help with telemarketing? Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas Download our free report
Return to lead generation techniques
List Building Strategies & Setting Appointments & Telemarketing
Outsourcing your lead generation services – is it a good idea or bad?
Every small business owner is busy. That means you have to dedicate your efforts to the things you do well and where you can add value. If marketing and lead generation is something you’re good at, then great.
If not, outsourcing your marketing efforts could be a smart move.
A good friend of mine asked me this question, “As a self-employed business owner, what aspect of the sales process should I spend the most time on?”
It might seem like a complicated question but in reality it’s quite simple: You don’t make money producing leads; you do it by closing sales. That’s why many small business owners decide to outsource some or all of their lead generation activities – so that they can focus on closing new business.
Lead generation can be very time consuming for a sole trader or small business owner – but the things that take up so much time can be outsourced.
And they include:
A good lead generation company will understand your business and your target market. Their advice and experience can save you both time and money by avoiding the things that don’t work.
Of course, to get the best results you need to find:
Return to Top page Lead Generation Services
Back to Lead generation Home Page
