Qualify Leads and Boost Sales With a B2B Appointment Setting

B2B lead generation is an essential yet extensive process involving several tasks. These include conducting customer research, developing customer profiles, running campaigns and tracking performance.

A critical component of the B2B lead generation is B2B appointment setting, whereby your business contacts potential customers and schedules a meeting between them and your salespeople to discuss your products or services.

This article defines B2B appointment setting and how you know if your business needs appointment setting services. It also provides some B2B appointment setting tips.

What Are B2B Appointment Setting Services and Why Do You Need Them?

B2B appointment setting is a sales process in which sales representatives communicate with prospective clients and set up sales appointments for you, on your calendar. During the initial interactions, your appointment setters handle all your B2B sales leads and appointment setting.

An appointment setter calls the key decision-maker and discusses the product and its benefits, and then once the appointment is set, your sales team takes over and closes the deal.

Effective appointment setting benefits businesses of all sizes. The most obvious indicators that your business needs appointment setting services are:

• Your sales cycle is too long
• Your sales team is burnt out

Extended sales cycles are inevitable in high-involvement B2B businesses, especially where a consultation or demo must precede a sale. Despite their high payoffs, long sales cycles can be tedious and frustrating because your salespeople are expending their limited and valuable time vetting prospects, yet their time is best spent engaging qualified leads.

B2B appointing setting shortens and streamlines your sales cycles because your sales team doesn’t waste time playing phone/email tag. Instead, appointment setting services free up your sales rep’s time to spend on customers at the latter stages of the sales funnel.

Furthermore, having a dedicated appointment setting team minimizes the risk of overburdening your salespeople. Many companies today outsource the B2B appointment setting to generate more leads and book more appointments while saving on the cost of developing, recruiting and training an internal team of appointment setters.

This divide and conquer approach streamlines your sales process, allowing your executive sales reps to close deals after the best B2B appointment setters schedule appointments and follow up with interested customers or clients. With that in mind, here are a few appointments setting tips experienced sales reps rely on to generate quality leads.

1.   Research Extensively

Comprehensive research is one of the things that sets apart high-performing sales reps. They take time to know their audience, which includes the target industry, target company and the key decision-maker in the company. Assess your ideal customer profiles to hone in on your target audience based on your successes and challenges.

Find out what’s happening at the prospective customer’s company. Some things to look out for are any forthcoming challenges or recent successes. The more specific your research, the more comprehensive your understanding of the issues your prospective clients regularly experience.

2.   Reach Out on Multiple Channels

Multichannel outreach is a popular and effective tactic for generating leads. It uses several channels, including email, phone, social media, text and live chat to turn cold leads into warm ones. As many as 51% of businesses interact with prospective customers using at least eight channels.

For example, an email can warm up a lead you generated to a cold call, and a social media message can warm up the outreach email. Each additional channel improves the chances of the lead recognizing your brand and agreeing to set up an appointment to discuss how your product may benefit them.

3.   Timing Is Important

Time your outreach appropriately. Contact prospective customers at the right time, especially when sending a cold email or making a cold call. Doing so increases the likelihood of them paying attention to you. Find out what times of day and days of the week the decision-maker will be most amenable to your outreach.

Likewise, test different times and days to determine what works bests for your industry and sales team. For example, many restaurants are not open on Mondays, and some lawyers are usually in court during certain times of the day.

4.   Be Personable

Your leads are more likely to give you their full attention if they feel that your interest in them and their company is genuine. Research their industry and company to glean information with which you can customize and personalize your messages to the people who make or influence decisions in the company.

You want your prospects to feel like they’re talking to a real person who understands them and their company. Remember, you’re not the only one calling or emailing them, so you need to stand out by personalizing your interactions with them.

5.   Demonstrate Your Value

Create a powerful pitch that shows the value your products bring to the prospect’s company. Let them know how your offerings will help their company’s pain points, which you unearthed during your research.

Don’t expect them to take your word for it, though. Find concrete ways to showcase your value. For example, you can share testimonials from your other clients or take your prospects through a relevant case study. The point is to show how your solution helps a real company solve a problem similar to the prospect’s company.

6.   Follow Up

Prospective clients don’t always respond to your first email or call. An effective sales cadence involves several touchpoints, meaning you need to contact your leads several times on multiple channels for them to respond. Experienced sales representatives follow up after their email or call goes unanswered because they don’t interpret it as a no.

Instead, they realize that they may have simply caught the prospect at a bad time and will try again at a more opprtune time. Some prospects might even respond to your proposal with “not yet,” in which case you should set a date and time to follow up. Remember to propose specific appointment times and send detailed reminders.

Outsourcing Appointment Setting to ProSales Connection

Effective B2B appointment setting is an extensive process that requires personnel, research, software and communication resources, all of which must be carefully coordinated. If your business is having difficulties with client follow-up, answering calls and converting leads to long-term customers, consider outsourcing your B2B appointing setting to the best appointment setters.  ProSales Connection has over 13 years of B2B Sales Development and Appointment Setting experience, and we'd be happy to get on a short call to discuss your business.   Schedule Now