How Leads Are Qualified
B2B lead generation, marketing and sales have a lot of moving parts: inbound and outbound, SEO and social media, email campaigns, and cranking out content to keep your blog and company success stories up to date. With all the other marketing activities taking up headspace, it’s no wonder that some companies overlook the value of sales appointment setting. But sales appointment setting should not be an afterthought; it should be a central priority for your sales strategy.
With the right approach to setting sales appointments, you can:
- Improve the efficiency of your overall marketing tactics
- Equip your sales team with warm leads
- Hit the ground running on building relationships with your most valuable sales prospects
Let’s take a high-level look at what B2B sales appointment setting really means, how it works, and how it can help your company.
In this Article
Sales Appointment Setting Starts the Sales Process
Between the first moment when a potential buyer hears of your company, and the final moments of closing a deal, there are a lot of “firsts” along the way. Think about how new business leads enter your sales funnel: do they all just call your company’s main phone number? Do they send an email to your contact form? Are you getting so many inbound leads that you don’t have to do any cold outreach at all? (Probably not, right?)
Not every new business lead will proactively reach out to you, no matter how great your email marketing and content might be. Instead, sometimes you need to take a proactive approach, and reach out to your potential leads – just with an introductory offer, not trying to pressure them, not trying to close a deal, but just asking for something simple: a first meeting. If handled properly by professional appointment setters, sales appointment setting can be the first stage of your sales funnel.
Get Your Quick Quote Today
How B2B Sales Appointment Setting Works
Here’s a quick overview of how professional B2B appointment setting works:
- Collaborate with your business to develop a precise contact list for cold outreach – via email, social media (as appropriate) and phone.
- Research your high-value prospects and target personas, so they can understand which business executives are most likely to be interested in your solution.
- Apply persistent, focused effort to contact your prospects via cold outreach, representing your company with professionalism.
- Deliver a simple sales script to introduce your company and explain how your solution can support your clients with their business goals and “pain points.”
- Make a simple “ask” of your prospects: “Would you like to hear more? Let’s book a meeting, and our sales team can talk with you further.”
The exact process might vary slightly, depending on your industry, your target prospects, and how your company prefers to conduct B2B lead generation activities. Some companies might prefer to handle a few steps of this process with in-house resources, and rely on the appointment setting company for additional research and supplemental work. Other situations might require more help from the appointment setters – for example, if your company wants inbound lead qualification services to help assess which leads are highest-priority and most likely to buy.
How a Sales Appointment Company Helps Improve Your ROI
A sales appointment setting company can take the lead in representing your company to your prospects, pre-qualifying new business leads, and making the “ask” of officially booking a sales meeting to start your sales cycle. Then the appointment setter makes the handoff to your sales team – giving your salespeople a pre-qualified business lead that is ready to talk and more likely to convert.
Here are a few examples of how sales appointment setting services can support your business:
Extra Hands on Deck
Especially in the current era of talent shortages and high staff turnover, every company is in a talent crunch. Most companies, especially small-to-mid size businesses (SMBs) or new startups, struggle to find the right in-house talent and resources to tackle every step of the sales process. Sales teams are often overwhelmed with their own prospecting; they’re working their contact lists, trying to capitalize on their own relationship networks and make quota. Marketing teams are often great at creative tasks and inbound lead generation, but usually don’t have the bandwidth or experience to make cold calls. Working with a sales appointment setting company can expand the scope of your company’s capabilities in a targeted way – opening up new conversations with your most valuable prospects.
Specialized Expertise in B2B Sales Appointment Setting
When you work with a sales appointment company, you get a team of professionals who have a highly specialized set of skills: picking up the phone, digging through cold outreach lists, and hunting down your prospects. Not every sales person loves prospecting, but the true rock star appointment setters have a knack for finding the right people within your buyer’s organization and making calls until they get to “yes.”
Get More Business Leads Faster
With the right team of professional B2B appointment setters, you can turbo charge your B2B lead generation process. Think of what you could accomplish if, in addition to your other inbound and outbound lead generation efforts, you could set loose a team of “prospect finders” to cast a wider net and start the process of building sales relationships? Sales appointment setting is another arrow in your quiver, another tool in the marketing toolkit. Don’t overlook the value of expanding your team for this specific purpose.
Manage and Nurture Your Long-Term Leads
Appointment setters are not just valuable as cold callers, script readers, and talkers – they’re also great at listening to customer feedback. Working with a sales appointment setting company can be an ideal way to gain market intelligence and hear what customers think about your products and services. Your appointment setters can bring you valuable insights on which business pain points are most critical to your prospects, which prospects are most urgently ready to buy, and which of your new business leads need long-term nurturing and ongoing lead management before they’re ready to buy. Along with a (hopefully) long and well-qualified list of new business leads, your appointment setting team will add value by delivering business intelligence insights.
Don’t underestimate the value of sales appointment setting. Along with your tried-and-true inbound and outbound lead generation strategies, sales appointment setting needs to be part of your marketing mix. Working with professional B2B appointment setters can speed up your process of identifying and qualifying new business leads. It can give your sales team a “pre-warmed” list of prospects who are ready to hear more. And appointment setting can support your overall marketing and lead management activities, in the short-term and into the future.
Want to Know How Much B2B Appointment Setting Services Cost?
Contact us for a free consultation. We will develop a customized quote based on your business needs.