- April 11, 2022
- by Last expert
- Appointment Setting, Blogs, Voice Support
- 0 Comments
Setting appointments can be difficult, but it is necessary for acquiring new customers and increasing your return on investment.
We’ll go over the many misconceptions about appointment scheduling and the facts behind them in this article so that we can help you improve your appointment planning strategy.
Appointment Setting is Simple
Some people feel that making appointments is a straightforward task and that they will come naturally, or that it is as simple as picking up the phone and making an appointment on the first call. It would be ideal if that were the case, but sadly, it requires a lot more effort to establish completely qualified appointments with relevant prospects who are likely to convert.
To establish a good appointment scheduling strategy, there are a few important components to consider.
Your pitch is the first. Delivering a poorly phrased, pushy, and awkward pitch can kill your chances of getting an appointment, and if your pitch is unclear, any appointment you do get could not be totally relevant, and the prospect might not comprehend what you’re selling.
Developing a script that sounds natural, keeps the conversation flowing, and asks open questions will make your interactions with prospects much more valuable. You should be able to gather all of the information needed to qualify the prospect, answer any questions they may have, and then discuss a suitable time for an appointment if they are interested.
The second issue is one of the resources. When executing an appointment setting campaign in-house, many organisations fail to realise that it takes more than a phone, a list of prospects, and a few hours to generate genuine business chances.
You’ll need a compliant data list with plenty of information to learn about your prospects and segment them according to your strategy, a well-structured CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to keep track of each prospect and your interactions, and enough staff to carry out the activity without jeopardising your operational efficiency – and, of course, the budget to get it all! Many people choose to outsource their appointment setting to a professional agency because of all of this.
Persistence is the final crucial component. Depending on your target market, securing a completely qualified appointment on the first interaction can be a very unusual occurrence. Some opportunities may require more nurturing; for example, if your offering is contract-based, you may need to wait until a prospect’s current contract is about to expire before engaging again, and larger opportunities may need to go through multiple departments within their company to gain approval before agreeing to an appointment.
Persistence and re-engaging when the moment is perfect will help keep your offering fresh in your prospects’ minds, create rapport, and lead to additional appointments and long-term business chances.
Sales Teams Should Be Booking Appointments
Is having your sales team confined in the office, prospecting on the phone all day the greatest use of their time, even if they are skilled at selling your offering and the appointment you are hoping to secure? Wouldn’t it be much better if they were out on the road, meeting with new clients and completing transactions rather than looking for them?
Hiring in-house telemarketers to manage your appointment setup strategy will assist free up your sales team’s time so they can focus on what they do best: closing qualifying offers.
Building a whole in-house telemarketing team, on the other hand, is not only a tough and time-consuming operation, but it’s also quite expensive when salaries, sickness/absence, pensions, and other personnel overheads are taken into account. As a result, outsourcing your appointment setting strategy can help you improve the quality and quantity of your appointments while also freeing up time for your sales staff and saving money over hiring an in-house telemarketing team.
Going Cheaper Will Maximise Profits/ROI
You get what you pay for, as the old adage goes.
When a business’s budget is tight, it’s common for them to go with the cheapest external appointment setup service they can find. They frequently feel that because the campaign costs are lower, the campaign earnings and ROI (Return on Investment) will be much higher if the outcomes are favourable.
You get what you pay for with the lowest appointment setting services. Any leads or appointments they set may not have been thoroughly reviewed or matched to your qualification criteria. This leads to a number of difficult scenarios, such as showing up to a meeting with a prospect who has little interest, need, or budget to progress – which is not just a waste of time and money, but also reflects poorly on your company for not thoroughly vetting your meetings.
Even if you chose the cheapest Pay-Per-Lead/Appointment agency, you may find yourself at their mercy and charged a significant amount if they continue to push through large numbers of appointments, all of which may have an appalling conversion rate due to their low quality.
Choosing the most expensive agency, on the other hand, is no guarantee of quality or outcomes. A campaign that produces low-quality or quantity results may be charged at a much higher fee. In other words, you don’t always get what you pay for.
Instead of focusing on which agency is the cheapest or the most expensive, you should focus on which agency is the best fit, the company that understands your offering, the audiences you want to reach, and what you want to achieve when looking for an external agency to take the hassle of appointment setting off your hands.
All Appointment Setting Agencies are the Same
“We tried outsourcing our appointment setup before, and the company didn’t know what they were doing, so we haven’t looked at it since,” several businesses have claimed throughout the years. Of course, a terrible outsourcing experience will make you wary of the practice, but a bad experience with one agency shouldn’t prevent you from working with others.
Would you keep driving around in a potentially broken car because the first shop you went to couldn’t solve the problem? No, I’d take it to a different garage with the necessary experience to resolve the issue.
The same may be said for your appointment-making technique!
Each company that provides appointment scheduling services will have various levels of experience, adopt different tactics, and deliver different outcomes. When looking to outsource, it’s critical to investigate several agencies to discover more about their experience and skills in your sector, the results they’ve achieved for other firms in your industry, and even their company values.
The experience and attitude of an agency aren’t the only things to consider; the price plan is also crucial.
Pay-per-lead/appointment models have been around for a long time in the appointment setting and lead generation industry, but does it mean they’re the best? The focus of the pay-per-lead/appointment model is often on appointment quantity rather than quality, which means you may receive a huge number of appointments but they may not be the appropriate fit for your organisation, resulting in a low conversion rate.
To avoid being identified with low-quality agencies who are merely focused on creating as many opportunities as they can, regardless of quality, to ratchet up your campaign expenditures, most experienced agencies don’t use the pay-per-lead/appointment approach.
Each agency is unique, so when it comes to outsourcing, it’s critical to pick one that has the experience, strategy, values and beliefs, and pricing model that best matches your business and your goals.