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Crafting a B2B Appointment Setting Formula that Never Fails

Crafting a B2B Appointment Setting Formula that Never Fails

In terms of generating sales and realize revenue growth, there is a constant need to optimize one’s appointment setting process. This is because business engagements with interested partners facilitate their transition to paying customers. But no doubt the process itself harbors a few complications here and there.

Firstly, one can assume that not all sales leads actually translate to actual purchases. This is an issue for a lead management system to tackle. However, since appointments entail head-on engagements with prospects, it matters if your salespeople have the proper qualities in terms of audience interaction.

It is also important to consider that effective B2B appointment setting depends on key sales facilities. The latest in CRM technology has to be installed so that leads can be better managed.

While these can be set, they also entail expenditures on staff trainings and system upgrades. Without proper oversight, these investments might just degrade your sales process, culminating in a failure to reach sales goals.

Failure is never an option and that is why businesses should focus on establishing sustainable strategies that can last long. Here are some useful tips to help you do just that.

Consider the time element in your engagements

It is crucial that your sales staff know the appropriate time to set appointments with their prospects. Usually, the ideal period in which to make contact is during lunch or around 8-9 am.

Follow up with email

In telemarketing, emails complement your prospect engagements. Your mails must have new information that was not yet discussed during the initial contact. To gain another engagement means keeping your prospect interested, best done through free ebooks, informational materials and invites to company webinars and trade shows.

Influencing comes first

It would seem the best approach to sell in the initial contact. But this often backfires, leaving your campaign on a difficult position to compensate for a rejected appointment. Marketers should remember that the sales process takes a long time before a prospect decides to buy. During such time, it is imperative to introduce your prospects to the types of capabilities you possess that other service providers don’t.

Be persistent but remain patient

The sales process takes a long time indeed, but this fact should not stop you from setting an appointment with your prospects. With a lot of hard work and dedication to your company’s goals will you truly attain realistic results in your B2B appointment setting.

How Marketing Automation and Appointment Setting go Together

How Marketing Automation and Appointment Setting go Together

Since ROI maximization is always in the minds of B2B executives, it is not surprising that most of these businesses are spending heftily for optimized marketing solutions. However, making such a gesture never guarantees an improved appointment setting campaign.

Marketing automation however continues to be a relevant tool despite how some B2B experts view it. In terms of setting up sales engagements with B2B leads, it continues to be a reliable partner for better conversions.

Time saving processes.

When leading an email marketing campaign, you would want every second to count. Time is essential as your prospects definitely make a great deal out of filtering what they deemed to be unimportant messages. They simply don’t want to entertain anything that doesn’t have anything to do with their time. With marketing automation, you are able to effectively manage multiple campaigns (and not just direct mail) by producing messages that aren’t insipid and huge time wasters.

Better lead targeting.

Precision is always a complex issue. But automated lead targeting could help you find the prospects that are eager to engage and to buy. You wouldn’t have to rack your brains over a list of potential prospects in your LinkedIn network. And you would give your conversion rates a boost by providing your lead generation and appointment setting with high profile B2B leads.

Better lead nurturing.

Automated lead management and follow up could improve any endeavor for a sales appointment. Once you get to interact with a potential B2B partner, it is imperative to keep him or her interested until an appointment is anticipated. With marketing automation, you are able to engage your prospects directly and warm them up for your sales pipeline.

Apparently, a good marketing automation program has to be handled expertly. Better guarantees are made by companies that have a proven track record in lead generation and appointment setting.

How to Succeed in your B2B Appointment Setting Campaigns_DONE

How to Succeed in your B2B Appointment Setting Campaigns

If a lead generation cycle were a movie, then the appointment setting part would be the climax. It’s the deciding factor on whether an interaction with a prospect will move forward or come to a halt. Because of this importance, telemarketers need to make sure they can grab this opportunity while it’s on the table.

Here are the best practices in carrying out an appointment setting campaign:

Gathering preliminary details

  • A defined target list with job titles, industries, and verticals
  • From the contact’s perspective, what’s the benefit of agreeing to an appointment?
  • Expectations from the sales team
  • Full understanding of products and services

Gaining buy-in from sales:

Communication before, during, and after the campaign is critical for a successful campaign. Before campaign launch: Outline the appointment setting process, set expectations, and gain a clear understanding of the desires and expectations of the sales team.

Adjustments can be made prior to launch based on feedback from sales team. Communication during TM appointment setting will allow for minor adjustments or modifications throughout the campaign.

Other Factors to consider:

Size of sales team

The strategy will vary depending on the number of sales representatives that appointments are being set for. More customization is possible for smaller teams compared to larger numbers of sales representatives where establishing standards is critical.

Mobility/geographical considerations

Mobility of the sales team, as well as the geography they cover should factor in to understanding which appointments are best suited for the team involved.

Scheduling appointments

The type of appointment and geography of the accounts the field reps are responsible for are important to consider as you set guidelines for the time frame between initial conversation and potential appointment dates.

Appointment Duration

This will vary depending on the goal of the appointment, but a typical phone appointment should be set for a minimum of 15-30 minutes and a face to face would customarily take between 30 minutes to an hour.

Built-in flexibility

While setting appointments, it is important to detect 2-3 potential options, preferably on distinct dates and varying times of the day.

Next Steps

Delineating expectations once the appointment has been set including the hand-off process and the party responsible for sending the meeting invite and/or rescheduling. This framework should be in place prior to outbound telemarketing, as the contact needs to have a clear understanding of next steps once the appointment is set.

The Five Ways You Waste Time In B2B Appointment Setting (Featured image)

The Five Ways You Waste Time In B2B Appointment Setting

Since we are talking about work, you might find yourself doing things that will not help you at all. Indeed, these might actually cause you to waste precious time. It sure makes sense if you can avoid them, right? So, what are these time-wasters that you should be avoiding?

1. Working too much on the wrong work – you know that there are limits to what you can do in a single day, so we try to work on things that matter the most. The problem here is when we focus our efforts to much on the wrong part of your telemarketing campaign. That would certainly waste a lot of precious time and manpower in our work.

2. Putting off the easy ones – I tell you, the easy tasks that you put off for tomorrow will become the hardest ones on that day. A veteran marketer would take every chance he gets to finish all necessary stuff up on the day it appeared. Letting it linger for later handling would be poor time management, and will cause you to waste time later on.

3. You micromanage your employees – all right, you might want to properly manage and observe your employees, but you will not be going anywhere near your goals if all you do is breath down their necks. You have more important things to do, and your employees will need a little slack while they are working on getting more B2B leads coming in. If you really believe that your employees need guidance all the time, then you probably chose the wrong people for the job.

4. You focus too much on the details – in marketing, you should really look at the details, but focusing too much on them would cause you to miss the big picture. When that happens, well, you might start committing mistake number one or two. Try putting some perspective in your work. That would help.

5. The wheel keeps getting reinvented – if there is anything that you might want to learn about in terms of time wasters, it is that reinventing the sales process rarely gets you the right results. Truly, if you are sensible enough for the job, you will know that some selling styles are best left as is. You just have to know what these are and work on them.

Yes, these are sure-fire sources of wasted time. If you truly want to be productive in your B2B appointment setting campaigns, please try avoiding these common, but erroneous, business and marketing practices.

Top Ten Tips For B2B Telemarketing

Top Ten Tips For B2B Telemarketing

Being effective in your B2B telemarketing campaigns all about being ready to address the various issues faced by both your customers and business prospects. Basically, it is all about providing quality customer service for all you call as well as those who call you. While you do need to meet your sales leads targets, you also need to make sure that the other party is happy as well. This is a very important point in ensuring that your B2B appointment setting process will go smoothly. Now, the question here is how you do your job right. Luckily, there are some tips that you can use.

1. Clarify complaints – people complain about the service or products that you offered, you should check the details. Most callers would be saying too many details that the real issue could get muddled.

2. Have confidence – this is a real boost to your performance, one that can be noticed during your call. Believe that you can do the job, and the job can be done.

3. Be positive – no matter how bad the day has gone by, thinking that things will turn out well in the end is important. A little positive outlook can mean a great deal for a person’s morale.

4. Speed up the call handling – time is precious, for both the caller and the called. It is important that you and your B2B lead generation team be made aware of that. No dilly-dallying of calls, go straight to the point, and help your prospects get things done.

5. Have a proactive system of helping prospects – some problems can be anticipated before it happens, so it pays for you and your team to prepare for it before it happens.

6. Plan your seating arrangement – this is especially important in large scale telemarketing operations with shifting work schedules. It would be useful if you can get some automated planning system that will maximise the productivity of our marketing team.

7. Know who you are calling – take note that there are different kinds of customers and potential B2B leads. Once you realise these little details, it would be easier for you to generate more sales leads for your business.

8. Make self-service options easier for users – sure, nothing beats a good marketing call, but you have to make sure that alternative sources of information is readily available in a quick and convenient manner.

9. Hire the right team – telemarketing can be a really stressful and complex job, so in the event that you have to hire people, make sure you hire those who know this business well.

10. Delegate to the right people – you cannot do everything well on your own. In case you have to do business with someone you are not skilled with in handling, leave that job to those who do.

These tips can be really simple, but they all have a strong effect on B2B lead generation campaigns that rely on them. You can follow these tips to, and you will see that this is a good investment.

Hire Right For Your Appointment Setting Team

Hire Right For Your Appointment Setting Team

In any kind of business, hiring the right person for the job is a crucial activity. This is what makes all the difference in the success or failure of your company. That is also the main concern for those involved in B2B appointment setting campaigns.

You see, the risk of hiring the wrong man is a real problem. It can cost your company a big deal in terms of lost sales leads, not to mention the loss of good will and rapport, in case your new hire is not that good in public relations. Now, just imagine if the job vacancy is in the telemarketing department. Just think of the mess that it would create for you to fix.

Mind you, that does not come cheap. In that case, why not do it right the first time? If you just know how to do it, then you will be in the right path.

Take it slow

You know, the hiring process should never be rushed. Sure, you know that upper management has their demands, and that they set deadlines, but you need to wait a little bit more, in case the right candidate comes up. Waiting for resumes to come in takes time, and that is something you can never rush.

Consider hiring as a sieve

In order for you to hire the right people for B2B appointment setting services, you need to basically weed out the worst from the best candidates. Basically, you can only do that if you have a lot of candidates, which means you keep contacting as many candidates as you want. And if you put the right rules and processes in place, like interviews or special instructions, you can truly get the best ones.

Have checkpoints

For longer hiring processes, it would be sensible to set up check points. This will allow you to screen out applicants based on specific skills or knowledge that your company may need. Also, this gives you more time to decide on who you should really hire to get your B2B leads.

Give out correct tests

This is one portion of the hiring process that is so important, but one that usually creates a lot of misunderstanding on the part of your hiring team. You see, test scores can only do so much, especially if what you give them is just a generic type of test. Maybe you need to conduct more exams, or probably more interviews to really bring out a candidate’s skill.

Ask your team

After you have evaluated the values, methods and skills of your candidates, and seeing them as acceptable in your eyes, try asking your own team, hear what they say. They might be able to give you additional input about their skills, or provide you a perspective that is different from what you initially thought of.

Yes, hiring more people for your lead generation campaign is a necessity. All it takes is for you to take a concrete effort to choose your people properly.

How to deal with Appointment Setting problems - Featured image

Six Steps To Dealing With Problems In Appointment Setting

Managing and resolving problems are a normal part of dealing with customers in an appointment setting campaign. I mean, you are conducting one since you know that prospective sales leads have their own problems to solve, right?

We need to know how to best handle the selling process. By properly assisting your customers, you establish a better relationship with them. When they have a positive relationship with you, they spread the word to their friends and family. Word of mouth practically compels the listeners to come in and ask for our help. All of that starts with the proper way of resolving problems and issues that are presented to you. Now, this is how you do it:

To start with, clarify with the customer what the problem is. Listen carefully to what they are saying. You should take note that resolving this problem is very important to your B2B leads prospects. Otherwise, they would not even be coming near you in the first place. Take ownership of the problem (even you are not to blame). Your job, at this point, is to calm them down and open coherent discussion.

Next, investigate thoroughly the problem. And when I say thoroughly, I mean deeply. A problem may not be what it seems. It is possible that several layers of issues encompass a single problem, which will require several different ways to deal with it. A simple ‘band-aid’ solution will not cut it like that. You have to be decisive in dealing with such things.

Third, you should be willing to give your sales and telemarketing team more power to resolve issues. You can create a ‘one-call’ resolution system that will answer all customer issues in an efficient and effective manner. And the crucial piece of that set-up is giving your people the authority to deal with problems on their own.

Fourth, prepare your reports. After going through all the facts, you should then share your findings both with the company you work for and the customer you are helping. The former needs the data in order to store in their archives, while the latter would want to know the extent of your work. And both parties might be able to give you more details once they knew where you stood at that time.

After the reporting, then comes the time for you to develop the business solution. You know that each customer has their unique issues. That is why you should put some effort into crafting a personalized solution to their problems. It will take some time, but you will realize that you are in the right path come implementation time.

Finally, you should follow up. After implementing the solution, you should come back and asses it well. You need to know whether your plan worked, or if you need to alter the plan yet again. This is the last, yet the most important, step.

See, these can be simple ways to improve your lead generation and appointment setting campaign. You just need to have the courage to implement them.

A man reading a book about Steve Jobs

Lead Generation Lessons From Steve Jobs For The Australian Market

What makes a marketer effective in lead generation? This is just one of the many questions that have always come foremost in the minds of those responsible in generating qualified B2B leads in Australia. Perhaps we can take a page from the late Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple. Considering the number of people praising his style of selling (not to mention a significant number vilifying the same strategies), we can learn a thing or two about our own way of getting sales leads, especially if we use telemarketing for our work. So, how can we do it, Steve Jobs-style?

First, we should be aggressive. Not in the sense that we are intruding into the life of our business prospects, but more along the fine line of not taking ‘no’ for an answer. Basically speaking, nothing ventured is nothing gained.

Second, focus on presentation. Why else was Jobs able to get that ‘wow’ reaction from his buyers? Because he knows how to present well. It is the same thing with you, if you want to turn sales leads into a closed deal. Being able to stand out in the ground meant presenting something in the most attractive manner possible.

Third, always deliver. What is the use of all those aggressive selling and presentation if you do not deliver what you promise? This is the greatest strength that Jobs’ company did, and this is something that we can learn for our appointment setting campaign.

These are the three main points that you can learn from Steve Jobs. You can use these to ensure that your lead generation campaign is more successful.

call center culture

Uses of Outbound Telemarketing For Your Growing Business

Australia has embraced telemarketing as a critical element in their customer service support and other inbound services. Business organizations, there have optimized its use by establishing a help line for emergencies, a channel where clients can put out their issues and concerns, and a medium to strengthen the bonds between the seller and the buyer. Indeed, the use of the telephone is very consequential in maintaining healthy relationships with customers. Its fastest speed, ease of access, national and international coverage makes it the best way to provide solutions to clients’ problems.

But, telemarketing is not confined within the walls of inbound calling. Client support and other inbound activities form only one side of marketing through the phone. The other one is outbound telemarketing. It is a function that is concerned more on bringing new clients to the sales pipeline, making researches about the current market and talking with the decision-makers of other companies. If inbound concentrates in retaining customers through immediate responses to their needs, the epicenter of outbound is with generating new buyers. Increasing the value and quality of the sales pipeline is one of the tasks that can be accomplished through this pursuit.

You can make use of outbound services to propel your business success further. Here are some of the activities you can work on.

• B2C/B2B lead generation. One of the best things to find sales-ready buyers is to obtain their business and consumer contact information. In this task, cold-calling is now considered a veteran, which combines fast speed and accuracy in gaining B2C/B2B sales leads. Although you can power up, online marketing and other avenues, making cold calls has an edge over such tools. What sets phone marketing apart is the chance to talk directly with the decision-makers. A telemarketer can directly engage in a dialogue with them, which makes it possible to determine their interest level. Through this, you can generate only willing buyers and avoid the hassle of chasing poor leads.

• Market surveys. Apart from obtaining new customers, you can use outbound calling to know more about your target market. Another way to attract clients is to give to them what they need and want. By doing a telephone survey, you will unleash their desires. The information you obtain will guide you in recreating products and services according to the preferences of targeted leads. Market research is the key to unlock your customers’ hearts desires.

Database cleaning. If you have your own leads database but have not updated it recently, the phone is the best way to clean it. Verifying data directly from the prospects and clients themselves is something that only telemarketing can accomplish in high speed and precision. You can get rid of old contacts and replace them with the latest information. Besides, you can add new data.

Appointment setting. Business leads are not only things generated. The phone, when done properly, is a channel to get hold of business appointments. In fact, appointment setting is made easier and faster with telemarketing. Just be sure that quality assurance is firs imposed on generated leads in order to avoid wasting time on cold leads.

If you want to ascertain that the future economic benefits expected to gain in telemarketing exceed the costs, put your trust on outsourcing. Credible telemarketing call centres can find business opportunities in behalf of you. After all, contact centres are experts in this field.

How To Choose An Appointment Setter For Your Business

How To Choose An Appointment Setter For Your Business

When choosing an appointment setter for your business, it is important to that their services are compatible with your company goals to develop to provide excellent customer service.

We all know that lead generation is important for a business to grow. It is also important to have a good system for contacting the leads to establish good relationship with them. Appointment setting services can help you manage your contacts, call them, deal with them and to set up a meeting.

To find new clients from those leads is not an easy task. It is absolutely impossible for a business owner to manage time and manpower to contact all those leads and make deals with them to do business. With B2b appointment setting, you can do all the tasks up to rescheduling and dealing with clients confusions about the set meeting.

Cost-Reduction

Outsourcing appointment setting services will not only help your business increase sales but it is also for cost-reduction and increase revenue. It will be much expensive if you plan to have your own appointment setting company. Training people and building the infrastructure will cost you a lot.

Double the Sales

B2B appointment setting services works like they are within your own company. They know how every product and services that you offer. They know how everything works. These will double the force of your selling system and increase sales output. They are expert in this field and able to make strategies that will work for your business.

To be noticed

Working with an appointment setter will not only increase your sales but will make you to be noticed by your prospects. There are different mediums that can be use nowadays like radio, TV, and online ads but business owners cannot be contented with them. They know that using the phone and talking to the potential customers is still the best.

What Appointment setting company to look for?

When working with an appointment setting services it is important that you work with a company that is already experienced and have good reputation. Check the companies that they have worked before. Look if they are effective like they said they are. Do not hesitate to ask questions. You must know how their calls are made, time they call, how many shifts and more. You might also want to know what other services they offer that can help your business grow.