Appointment Setting Basics

Hit Rate Solutions
Jul 26, 2017 · 4 min read

Appointment setting as a category has been around for decades. Most new content focuses on intermediate to advanced tactics. They discuss topics like optimizing the funnel and how to jiu jitsu more leads to your sales teams. What many of these blogs (this one included) overlook is that as new industries and business processes are formed there is a constant need for net new appointment setting campaigns. For this post, I have tried to distil some of the key concepts for those starting appointment setting campaigns from scratch.

Here are some things to consider:

  • The introduction is 80% of the battle. The first ten to fifteen words have an outsized impact on the success of you campaign. Whatever you do, do not sound like a scripted appointment setting campaign. Some of this has to do with how you train your appointment setters which we will save for other posts. There are some best practices for nailing a great intro.
  • Do what everyone else is NOT doing. Appointment setting tends to have a herd mentality and like fashion it is cyclical. So at any point in time, you will notice patterns of what people are saying when they call you to set appointments. In this case, the trend is not your friend.
  • Do not overthink it. Judging a good intro is simple. If someone called you and used your intro, would you continue to talk to the person? Does the person calling seem genuinely interested?
  • Listen to your people. A struggle and opportunity for any appointment setting campaign with more than one person calling is to get everyone to stay on message. If someone has initial success going off script, other appointment setters may try to mimic it. While this can lead to success, non-data driven approaches can lead to sub-optimal results. You can use this divergence from the script to bring new ideas to action. If you hear something that is working you can A/B test it and use data to validate if it works better. This is also an approach to keep things fresh on the floor. If you engage your appointment setters to run tests this is one small way to fight potential turnover.
  • Ask great questions. After the introduction, this becomes the most important determinant of success. Before going over best practices, you need to decide what kind of campaign you are running. Is it a campaign that is very simple and transactional (most B2C appointment setting) where you are asking a few qualification questions and asking for the appointment. If so, you want to try to keep your questions to have answers that are yes and no. But if you have a B2B campaign, you most likely want to have your appointment setters ask open ended questions that do not have a yes and no and train your appointment setters for possible responses. This will allow you to create additional rapport with your prospects and to get better information when you are taking next steps.

Ask questions where your appointment setters are authorities on the subject. Give them proper training but also prepare them for what can happen on the call. The prospect should walk away from the call feeling that they are better prepared to make a decision.

  • A clear ask for the next step to end the call. This seems intuitive but you will not believe how many appointment setting campaigns miss this step or do not do this correctly. A clear next step must include the following:
  • A simple and clear question for the prospect to make a commitment
  • A confirmation of that commitment
  • An action item for the appointment setter or one of the following to take an action

There are many campaigns that take a portion of these steps but many miss the clarity needed to create homogeneity among your callers and to properly judge results. The most simple example is a calling campaign where the prospect only needs to sign up for a simple form online and there will be a follow-up action taken. If your caller is not actively guiding them through the process, confirming they have done so and clearly stating what will happen next while getting the prospect to confirm they understand then there will be missed opportunities.

Newcomers to appointment setting campaigns are often afraid of taking too much of the prospect’s time with this step. But what you will find is that if you have a good intro and ask the right questions your prospect will tolerate, if not appreciate, a thorough process of confirmation and continuation of the process.

If you are starting a new appointment setting campaign and you have a great introduction, intelligent questions and a clear call to action you are off to a great start. You can read more of this blog to cover training, call lists, back end systems and other processes that will help you on your way to appoint setting success.


Originally published at hitratesolutions.net on July 26, 2017.

    Hit Rate Solutions

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    Hit Rate Solutions delivers BPO services so that companies can optimize their operations & improve business performance. http://hitratesolutionsreviews.com

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