If you’re worried about poor conversions and an insufficient number of clients, it looks like your business is having some sales funnel problems. One of the main reasons may be incorrect B2B appointment setting. In this article, we will analyze the following aspects:
what is an appointment setting and why is it important for every business;
basic steps to drive potential customers down the sales funnel;
how appointment setter services can help your business cope with difficulties.
What is B2B Appointment Setting?
The appointment setting is usually made by the sales specialists. These are the actions your team takes to drive a prospect down the sales funnel. An appointment setting occurs with qualified leads. These are the people who are interested in your products or services and have already been interviewed by a sales representative.
Making appointments is a laborious process that has tremendous implications for any business. The purpose of this activity is to spend time with potential clients in order to better explain how your business can solve their problems.
Stages of B2B Appointment Setting
Every business looking to thrive should take care of its own appointment setting strategy. Approaches can vary significantly depending on the industry and the size of the business. But we will consider the basic steps that work in any case.
Search
This phase may involve collaborative action between the marketing and sales teams. They evaluate qualified leads in order to understand who they are in the decision-making process.
At the same time, the team should initiate a conversation if the lead is interested in your products and services. Next, they determine who in the potential client’s team is responsible for deciding on the transaction. Your team can only move on to scheduling an appointment after they have determined that the prospect is ready to make a purchase.
Making appointments
The next stage involves interacting with the lead to choose the best time to meet. You will have to schedule a contact with the decision-making person in order to discuss the terms of the deal in more detail.
Closing
After the appointment is made, you will have a personal conversation with potential clients. This is the time to negotiate the terms of closing the deal, thus translating potential customers into your buyers.
Who are B2B Appointment Setters?
As we’ve seen, setting appointments is an important step in the sales process. It is carried out by specially trained people who are also known as appointment setters. In many companies, sales representatives perform this role. By means of cold calls or emails, they contact potential customers to get interested in an offer about your products or services.
B2B appointment setting person must qualify the lead before moving on to more actionable steps. They conduct interviews to determine if a customer is ready to buy and who makes the decisions in their company.
Appointment Setter Companies
Some businesses prefer to hire separate companies that provide appointment setting services. This has several advantages. If you don’t have enough experience in making appointments, such companies can be a lifeline. They will develop strategies for qualifying leads in accordance with the needs of your business and will do all the necessary work instead of you.
So when should you hire an appointment setter company? One of the key aspects that influences this decision is conversion. Let’s say that your marketing department is attracting a lot of potential customers, but they don’t go down in the sales funnel. This is a clear signal that your appointment setting strategy is not working properly.
Pay attention to how long it takes your team to close the deal. If this is too long a process or the team is having a hard time identifying the decision-maker in the prospect’s business, it also indicates that your appointment setting process is pretty bad.
In such cases, outsourcing is a great solution. You can hire the right company to help you improve and streamline your appointment setting process at the best cost.
Benefits of the Outsourcing Appointment Setters
Let’s take a closer look at the benefits that you can get by using the services of appointment setting companies:
- The ability to focus on other areas. By hiring an outsourcing company, you delegate some of the tasks. This gives you the time and resources to focus on something else. Ultimately, this increases the overall productivity of the business.
- Improving the quality of negotiation. Companies providing appointment setter services have extensive experience in this area. Thus, they direct all their efforts to improve the negotiation process. They make appointments with the highest conversion rates, which can ultimately lead to more sales.
It is worth noting that such specialists have strong analytical thinking and even knowledge of psychology, which allows them to successfully make appointments quickly.
- Shorten sales cycle. By increasing the conversion, you get the opportunity to make your sales process more efficient. In turn, this leads to increased profits and business growth in general.
- Maintaining the brand image. With the help of professional setters, you create a high-quality brand image and its reputation, which is extremely important in the modern world. The more solid your business looks, the more people willing to make a deal with you.
Choose the Best Appointment Setter Services
Appropriate appointment setting is what will help your business grow and increase its sales. Unfortunately, many companies do not pay enough attention to this, as a result of which they suffer huge losses. A quality appointment setting strategy should be a priority if you want your business to be fruitful.
Of course, you can learn from your mistakes, but it can be too expensive. A smart and reliable way is to use the services of professional agencies like Belkins. Their experts have helped more than 200 companies successfully achieve strategic goals and reach a new, better level of sales.