Everything You Need to Know About B2B Appointment Setting
The complex nature of B2B products or services requires the agility and ability to influence prospects in a compelling way. To acquaint a potential sales prospect with your company and products, meaningful human interaction is paramount. Either in-person or over the phone. In B2B, calling is one of the most effective ways to reach out to professionals. It can increase the number of prospects, appointments, and ultimately sales. Even if the prospect isn’t ready to buy, the B2B appointment setting call offers a great opportunity to personally introduce your brand.
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Securing appointments can be an uphill battle especially when you are dealing with professionals and senior decision-makers. Convincing them to take out their valuable time takes a lot of patience, skills. perseverance and a personalized approach.
We will talk about all of it one by one but first, let us understand what B2B appointment setting is?
What is B2B Appointment Setting?
When your trained sales representatives call up your top-of-the-funnel prospects to follow-up, nurture, and ultimately set meetings, the whole process is called a B2B appointment setting.
You must have got cold calls on your cellphone following up on any big purchasing decision. For instance, a Car. The tele caller insists on setting an appointment with a sales rep who can help you make the decision.
That call is an important one for the company because it decides whether a prospect moves down into your sales funnel or not.
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B2B appointment setting is basically a Sales development activity that helps your business to get out in front of new clients. This way you can make new sales and create partnerships.
The goal of appointment setting is to find new potential clients that could be interested in your service, contact them, and convince them for a meeting (whether virtual or in-person).
Role of a B2B Appointment Setter
Moving on to what do the appointment setters do?
Well, if you’re thinking they are on their desk all day making phone calls or sending emails, you are wrong.
B2B appointment setting is much more than that.
Here is a list of activities performed by a B2B appointment setter:
1. Selling
2. Data Entry
3. Writing Emails
4. Prospecting or Searching Leads
5. Schedule meetings
6. Training
7. Attending Internal meetings
8. Learning New Tips
9. Getting Acquainted with Industry News
Skills to look for in a B2B Appointment Setter
57% of the buyer’s journey is completed before the buyer talks to sales.
Hence, your B2B company needs the right people and the right B2B Appointment Setting Strategies to scale your business.
An appointment setter should be an excellent B2B marketer. He should acquire all the below skills:
1. The appointment setter must be able to carry a conversation well with the prospects about the business, industry, their needs, etc.
2. Apart from communication skills, appointment setters must also understand how the business works. They should be well acquainted with the know-how and latest updates of what is happening in the industry. They should also know what activities are required to hit the target ROI.
3. The ultimate goal of an appointment setter is to deliver value propositions. To do their job well, setters take time to understand, research, and strategize their way of working.
4. Top appointment setters always know the correct point of contact. They are aware of the key decision-makers in top companies. Even if they miss them somehow, appointment setters know whom to speak to and what questions to ask to find the key decision-maker.
5. Top appointment setters know how to handle rejections and take them positively. They are trained how to respond in these particular situations and do not give up when a prospect says ‘No’. In fact, they take rejections as an opportunity to learn more about the prospects’ needs, pain points, motivations, etc.
6. The appointment setters are adept in the lead generation process and have mastered their duties. They know the lead generation process in and out and continue to repeat it for every prospect in the pipeline.
7. Appointment setters talk to several prospects a day. They need to be proficient in the CRM software their company uses to track and keep a record of all potential customers.
8. Competent appointment setters know how to gather information, know the pain points, and other relevant info about the prospects. They ask the right set of questions to accumulate as much information as possible to pass on to the sales reps.
9. In hard times, appointment setters considerably increase their sales volume to help sales reps close more sales.
B2B Appointment Setting Strategies
Whether you outsource an appointment setting company or do it in-house, You have to have some really good B2B Appointment Setting Strategies to accomplish the set goals.
Getting a B2B prospect to commit time and energy is far from an easy job. If you are missing any of the essential elements, you can miss out on a big potential sale.
Here are some of the key elements of a B2B Appointment Setting.
1. Target Market
Scheduling appointments with prospects who do not even belong to your industry is a waste of time.
This is why having a target market becomes indispensable for setting fruitful appointments.
The targeting must be directed at the right group of people. The prospects must be:
- From your industry
- Should be at decision-making positions
- Should actually be in the need of your products and services
Location, company size, etc are other things to consider while setting up a target lead base.
After defining your target prospects, you should analyze your existing database to filter such prospects. Additionally, you can source new data or build a list from scratch.
2. Research
Amongst all the B2B appointment setting strategies, carrying out research about the target prospects is extremely important.
It helps you to understand more about their business and the pain points of the potential customers. The more you know about the issues they are crippling with, the better you are able to convince them.
Research gives the sales rep the insights to better convert an appointment into a sale. You know the buying mode, interests, and needs of the client. A little personalization along with these insights can help you with the sale.
As per Discover.org – 78% of decision-makers polled have taken an appointment or attended an event that came from an email or cold call.
Hence, the research should be strong enough to make that impact.
The research can be pre-call research on Linkedin, Data.com, Zoominfo, and other industry sources. Or, it could be a right mix of open and closed questions over the appointment setting call.
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3. Prepare
Nearly 57% of B2B prospects and customers feel that their sales teams are not prepared for the first meeting.
Every meeting/appointment requires you to prepare well in advance.
In a B2B appointment setting, a lot matters when you are the one who’s responsible for closing a huge deal.
From the way you look to the way you speak, your knowledge about the industry, client’s business, everything holds value.
As the world is progressing more towards a virtual era, most of the meetings are happening online these days. For a virtual meeting, prepare well with your connectivity, lighting, case studies, and all the information required to be shared with the client.
4. Addressing Rejections
Even if a prospect says no(very common), you still get a lot of insights into how your proposition is perceived.
It can help you find out why the prospect doesn’t want to engage with your sales team and what are your competitors offering better than you?
All these insights add enormous value to your business and can help you tailor your message.
Amongst a few “Yes”, you’ll get plenty of “No”. But these rejections will become the voice of the clients which will help you do the required changes.
Additionally, if the problems and doubts of the prospects are resolved, they can still be converted to a high-value customer.
5. Strategize
Before the final appointment, the sales reps must strategize and work upon an agenda for the meeting.
Generally, B2B sales reps commit the mistake of not being prepared before an appointment. This can severely impact the agenda and the purpose of the meeting.
B2B clients are very particular about what they want, how they want, and when they want it. If the sales reps do not strategize beforehand, they will not be able to personalize the proposition to the clients’ needs.
To avoid this blunder, always take notes on the appointment setting phone call. Also, try to gather as much as information in the phone call itself so that you better understand the prospects’ needs and requirements.
5. Custom-Tailored Approach
Now that you have already gathered data about your prospect, present a proposal that is tailored to their requirements.
Without wasting the clients’ time by asking the same questions, or showing some random case studies, personalize the approach.
You can quickly show them a particular case wherein you tailored your services according to the clients’ requirements, and how that approach helped the client.
The prospects want to know why they should buy from you. And with all the competitors around, you need to show how better you are from them.
6. Outcomes
Every appointment is set in the hope of some of the other outcomes.
Set a goal for yourself before the appointment and focus on achieving that. Summarize the key points of the meeting to the client and advise the timescales for the next step.
Deliver your promises within the timelines of the clients’ expectations. Now that you have already established a relationship, not fulfilling your promises is only going to do harm to you and the company.
7. Follow up
An end of the meeting does not necessarily mean that the appointment setting process is over. You still need to follow up.
According to Scripted – 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up.
But do you know that for most of the sales to happen, it requires at least 4-5 follow-ups?
You need to continue to nurture the prospect, send relevant updates, invite them to valuable industry events, and more.
Your communications with them should be in accordance with the sales funnel they are in. Some prospects aren’t ready to buy immediately, but continue to be well-qualified leads.
Continue to nurture that future prospect since he has invested time to learn about your offerings.
Additionally, always remember there is a fine line between persistence and annoyance.
Once this line is crossed it is difficult to get that prospect back. I’m sure you’d not want to lose a potential B2B customer.
Should You Outsource Appointment Setting?
Now that you know What B2B appointment setting is, you know how important it is for you to grow your business.
However, you might come across the dilemma to outsource appointment setting or doing it in-house.
While both of them have different benefits to offer, outsourcing appointment setting is indeed an economical affair.
While with an in-house setting you can directly oversee a team and provide valuable inputs, outsourcing allows you to focus on improving your products or services and run your business efficiently.
The offshore appointment setters receive extensive training and learn your business so that they can schedule appointments and help you close more deals.
The Key Takeaway
Whether you choose a B2B appointment setting company or do it in-house, you know the major B2B appointment setting strategies that can help to give your business a new boost.
Building a team of skilled appointment setters isn’t as hard as it may seem. However, if you think you can do well with some advice, our experts are always there to enlighten you more on the B2B appointment setting.
We hope this article will help you provide a regular feed of high-value appointments to your team, resulting in better sales and increased customer satisfaction.