Need to book more demos & appointments? Add these 3 tricks to your outreach process
In the sales development world, efficiency is the name of the game.
You’ve got lists to build, hundreds of emails to fire off and dozens of dials to make, all in the race to crush demo and appointment quotas. There’s no room for low-ROI activity.
At the same time, you know that completely automating your outreach process will end in deleted messages and unanswered calls. Keeping outreach efforts personal is crucial to getting responses, but it’s also incredibly time-consuming — and your to-do list is already full-to-bursting.
So how do you cater to prospects in a way that gets them on the phone, while still ensuring that others don’t slip through the cracks in the rush?
These three tricks, which can be easily built into your own outreach process, will ensure that prospects feel respected and cared for — and, therefore, way more likely to book an appointment — without sucking extra hours out of your day.
3 SECRETS TO ADD TO YOUR OUTREACH PROCESS FOR MORE DEMOS & APPOINTMENTS
1) Ask for just 4 minutes
Time is money, both for you and your prospect. If you’re hesitant to hand 15 precious minutes over to someone you don’t know, so are they.
To make “yes” the easier answer, make your ask smaller — under five minutes.
“I cannot tell you how many invites I’ve sent for four-minute calls,” says Rivalry’s resident SDR Emilie Norton.
“It’s such a short amount of time that I see at least a 70% success rate. And of course, once we’re on the phone, four minutes always turns into more.”
2) Get out of your own schedule’s way
If you’re still setting up all your meetings by email, you’re forcing one prospect to wait to while another one confirms (or changes — again) a proposed meeting time. That’s like offering them a cupcake, then giving it away to someone else.
While trading emails with Prospect A to set up a demo, you inherently make Prospect B wait for your attention until Prospect A’s call is scheduled. So Prospect B feels uncared for and unimportant, and as the email thread drags on, Prospect B eventually abandons.
Including a scheduling app in your sales toolkit, as software companies TrackVia and WizeHive have done, empowers each prospect to set up a meeting as soon as they’re ready, rather than making them wait in a slow-moving line. And less waiting for them = more bookings for you.
3) Don’t use templates that suck (or: include phrases that prove your prospect’s time is valuable)
There’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to use email templates and scheduling tools. Just last week, Insightpool’s CEO Devon Wijesinghe nailed how annoying it is to be asked for a favor, then expected to do extra work:
Remember — it’s all about the prospect, not you. While you already know that templates and tools make life easier for everyone, it’s imperative that you prove to your prospects that their time is valued, and that automating administrative work is really a win for them.
If you’re inviting people to meetings like this (as someone actually did to me last week!), you’re doing it wrong:
I have some questions for you and I want to talk on the phone. Book an agreeable time here: [scheduler link]
Wow. Talk about a recipe for success.
If you’re putting the focus on their time and needs, however, rest assured you’re doing it right:
Would love to connect with you. I’m free today at 2pm Eastern and tomorrow at 10am Eastern. If those don’t work for you, though, want to avoid the back-and-forth by grabbing the time that works best for you here? [Replace this with the link to your scheduler]
I’m happy to work around your schedule. Just choose the time that’s best for you here, and I look forward to continuing our conversation then: [Replace this with the link to your scheduler]
YOUR TURN
What tricks do you use to book more demos and appointments while still staying on top of your to-do list?
