Properly setting appointments in sales allows you to make the best use of your time and show other people that you value their time as well.
To make sure that you keep an optimal schedule for inbound and outbound sales calls, you can hire a virtual assistant as an appointment setter. With their help, you can provide positive business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-customer (B2C) engagements that can boost your sales.
Knowing how to set up an appointment effectively with prospects can lead to more opportunities to close deals and strengthen business relationships. Check out 12 tried and tested appointment setting best practices to drive your sales team towards success.
- Proper appointment setting shows respect for both your time and the prospect’s time, making way for a successful pitch delivery.
- Appointment setters are responsible for contacting prospects, introducing the business or product they might be interested in, and scheduling sales meetings.
- Hiring a virtual assistant as an appointment setter can help your sales team ‌focus on closing more deals while enhancing your B2B or B2C engagements.
What Does An Appointment Setter Do?
Appointment setters manage and contact prospects to establish sales opportunities further down the sales pipeline.
The role includes tracking schedules, lead prospecting, and maintaining databases. Their main duty, however, is ‌to reach out to prospects and urge them to set up a sales meeting with the sales team.
The process typically looks like this:
- The appointment setter reaches out to a potential customer.
- They briefly introduce your company, product, or service to the prospect.
- They encourage the prospect to agree to another meeting with a sales rep at a later date.
- They update the leads database based on the outcome of their interaction.
- If it went well, they appraise the sales team of the appointment who will be the one to close the sale.
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Tips on Setting Appointments in Sales
Setting appointments is more challenging than ever. As proof, the Sales Development Technology Report cites that it takes around 18 dials to connect with one buyer. To increase your chances of closing sales, here are 12 appointment setting best practices you should follow:
1. Consider the Prospect’s Time Zone
Time is vital to both your business and your prospects. Contact prospects when it’s most convenient for them based on their time zones.
For example, call prospects between 9 AM and 4 PM while most of them are at work. Data shows that the best response times are from 10 AM to 2 PM. If you do B2B sales, it’s also best to call during office hours.
Making calls when your prospects are trying to relax is ‌bad practice. In the same way, if you call their office without knowing their business hours, you’re bound to get redirected to voicemail. So, make sure to know the optimum time that your prospects will welcome a call from you.
2. Confirm Time Availability
When contacting decision-makers, be mindful of their busy schedules. So, always practice business etiquette when setting appointments in sales.
A considerate approach can open doors to more receptive moods and increase your chances of successful pitch delivery.
Since you’ll be reaching out to them at work, prospects may not always be happy to get a call from you, especially if they’re busy. So, make sure to ask politely if they can spare a few minutes of their time to talk to you.
If they can’t talk at the moment, don’t give up easily! Be respectful and ask them for a convenient time to call back.
3. Be Prepared
The right introduction to what you’re selling goes a long way. In fact, preparing for each call by adding value and insight closes up to 74% of deals.
To do so, know the product that the prospect you’re reaching out to will be interested in. Better yet, discover their preferences and anticipate their needs or concerns, whenever possible. Learn difficult questions and plan your answers.
For B2Bs, check their social media profiles to get insights into their personalities and preferences. You can also research the mission and core goals of the businesses where your target customers work.
4. Show Interest
One of the most fundamental appointment setting best practices is to have interest and empathy for your prospects. That said, feigning interest won’t let you truly understand what makes them tick. Many people can spot insincere chatters so remember to be genuine.
In appointment setting, you should connect to and understand prospects, especially with their needs, frustrations, and difficulties. From here, you can offer products and services that can help them, making it easier for them to agree to an appointment.
5. Don’t Be Pushy
Don’t think you’re not giving your prospects too much pressure, when in fact you are—at least according to your prospects. Hubspot cites that 50% of prospects think salespeople are aggressive while only 17% of salespeople believe they’re not.
While, appointment setting requires you to be zealous but it shouldn’t be too forceful. Be courteous in asking for the best time to call them.
Outright offering your pitch comes too fast and too strong, making your prospect annoyed and uncomfortable. This can result in a negative answer to your pitch.
When handling objections, try a consultative approach. Don’t bully them into agreeing to an appointment. This may discourage them from showing up at the set meeting or closing a deal.
Remember to use customer testimonials, facts, and persuasive language to pave the way for a positive appointment.
6. Take Advantage Of Technology
As integration tools provide better communication and collaboration among remote workers, more virtual assistant services are made available in the market. The goes the same with appointment setting in sales.
Use the best appointment setting software to improve how you set appointments in both B2B and B2C calls. You’ll want software with features that:
- Make inter-time zone calls easier
- Drop messages in voicemail while you make the next call
- Increase hourly dials with preview dialing
- Send customer follow-ups by email
- Allow multiple calendar synchronization for efficient team selling
7. Share User Reviews Online
Building an online presence is a must for startups and small or mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). One way to do this is to share user reviews and recommendations since 88% of customers trust them.
Providing social proof on your website and social media accounts can convince new prospects to agree to an appointment setting. Name-dropping high-profile customers you have good business relationships with can also convince doubtful prospects to take a chance on you.
If you don’t have famous clients to mention, share customer stories that show how you’ve helped them solve their problems. Those who are in similar situations will then be convinced that you could help them as well.
Case studies and testimonials can give detailed accounts of the problems your client faced, how your product resolved them, and finally, the results they got from it. These can help earn the trust of your prospects so they’re more likely to set up an appointment with you.
8. Think Target Market
Your prospects will come from various platforms. To get qualified leads who are seriously looking for or need your products, you need to work with your marketing team.
Follow up on ‌metrics such as:
- Website visitors – Request to be notified when prospects visit your website. This allows you to reconnect with people you’ve spoken to previously. For first-time visitors, setting up an appointment to discuss your products further can be a game-changer.
- Website downloads – Ask to be given a list of prospects downloading templates, white papers, and case studies published on your website. They’re more inclined to book an appointment with you.
- Event attendees – Get a list of all attendees of webinars and company events. They’re also prime contacts that you want to book appointments with.
9. Build Trust and Relationships
Your relationship with your prospects and customers must be based on trust and confidence. Here are two strategies you can use to build trust with prospects.
- Be human and build rapport:Customers want to talk to a human being, not a robot. Effective appointment setting calls for the skill to build rapport.Rapport allows customers to feel comfortable enough to hear more about your offers by agreeing to an appointment. Empathy goes a long way toward building trust, especially with just a few seconds to capture their attention.
- The goal is to book an appointment, not sell:Let’s say you’ve called a prospect many times and they’ve finally answered. Though you want to sell your products, now is not the time.Remember the main goal in appointment setting is to set up a meeting with them on a later date. Don’t pressure your prospect by selling your offers at this stage. Call to build trust genuinely and let it progress naturally.
10. Train to Handle Rejections
Even a seasoned appointment setter needs refresher training. Training allows you to have the right preparation to face and manage rejections. It includes knowing and understanding your prospects ‌and your products.
Know that even qualified prospects can have objections, too. Learn how to handle sales objections properly so you can present circumstances in a favorable light and include what makes your product unique.
11. Use a Script
Cold calling scripts allow you to know exactly what to say when pitching to potential customers. Even expert appointment setters who can successfully wing it need a script to make sure that their pitch is at par with the standards of the business and its competitors.
Here’s what a good script should have:
- Personalized greeting/opener
- Branded introduction of caller and the business they represent
- Positioning statement
- Discovery question/s
- Closing statement with call to action (set an appointment)
12. Remember to Follow Up
After piquing the interest of your prospects, make sure to ask for a follow-up meeting. Suggest a specific time and date and ask if that’s convenient to call them again.
Lastly, make sure to send them an email confirming the agreed time to call back including a short recap of what you talked about during the most recent call. This tactic works well, especially for industry-specific services, whose owners are always busy and on the go.
Combine Appointment Setting Best Practices with Magic to Boost Your Sales Success!
While appointment setting is important in sales, it can take up most of your time and resources which should go towards closing deals or growing your business. So, it’s crucial to learn and implement the appointment setting best practices we’ve discussed above.
One way to have a more streamlined and effective process is to outsource setting appointments in sales. This frees up time for your sales team to focus more on closing deals and driving your business’s revenue.
Boost your sales success with Magic’s flexible remote workforce! Hire an appointment setter or an outsourced SDR to help your sales team from generating and qualifying leads to CRM management and data entry.
Book a call with us to find out how to increase your bottomline with sales outsourcing!
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