Top 10 appointment setting tips

Appointment setting is a core telemarketing service for B2B CM. Our telemarketing team have more than 20,000 hours experience in completing appointment setting campaigns, providing a great resource of best practice guidelines to draw upon.

We’re proud of the expertise and experience our telemarketers have built up, and we’d like to share our team’s top 10 tips for B2B appointment setting. By following these tips you’ll be building on our best practice guidelines for appointment making, and other telemarketing activity.

1. Know your target audience

Successful telemarketing campaigns start with the planning, and it is essential to understand who it is you are targeting. Spend time thinking about who they are, where they are based, what sector they work in, etc. The better defined your target audience the better results your appointment setting telemarketing will generate.

2. Prepare for the call

Before picking up the phone for the first time, a telemarketer should make sure they are well prepared. Are you using a call script, or call flow? What is your opening line going to be? Do you have access to detailed background information on your products, to answer any questions that come your way?

Potential customers are not impressed by ill-prepared telemarketers and an appointment setting campaign can quickly fail if the sales person lacks knowledge.

3. Smile when you dial

Smiling when talking serves two purposes. Firstly it makes you, as the telemarketer, feel better, and secondly the person being called can hear a smile and a bright sounding voice.

First impressions count, and a smile helps you make the best impression possible.

4. Make sure you are speaking to the Decision Maker

It is amazing the number of times a telemarketer calls the B2B CM office, goes through their entire sales pitch, and then discovers they aren’t speaking to the Decision Maker. Making a sales pitch to the wrong person is waste of everyone’s time.

The person who makes the ultimate decision will depend on what the particular product or service is, especially in larger companies, and a telemarketer needs to understand the decision making chain and clarify the role of the person they are talking to.

5. Be clear. Be specific. Be yourself

Decision Makers are busy people so, when calling them, you need to maximise the minimal time you have.
To get the interest of the Decision Maker, a telemarketer needs to quickly establish why they are calling, what the product offering is and build a quick rapport with the potential customer.

Being clear and specific about why you are calling will help the decision maker understand why they should engage you in conversation.

Decision Makers receive sales calls every day, and they become highly skilled at picking out ‘false’ voices and fake personalities. Being yourself is about injecting your own persona into the conversation.

There’s much truth in the saying ‘people buy from people’ and coming over as a genuine person, not a robo-sales telephoning machine, will pay dividends.

6. Listen to the customer

During the opening part of the sales call, the customer will try and tell you valuable information. Information a telemarketer can use to establish an interest from the Decision Maker about your products.

Listening also builds rapport between the telemarketer and the prospective customer, creating a conversation rather than a question and answer session.

7. Identify needs and match them to the key benefits

We said in tip 6 that decision makers will try to tell you things if you listen. Tip 7 is about using the things you are told to identify your potential customer’s current needs and concerns.

Every business has on-going issues it would like to address and, if your targeting (remember tip 1) has been done well, then your product will satisfy the needs of the Decision Maker you are talking with.

When a business need has been identified, the canny telemarketer, thanks to their understanding of the product, will be able to ascertain quickly if they can help resolve the Decision Maker’s issues, and highlight the relevant benefits for the potential customer.

8. Objections are your friends

Inexperienced telemarketers can take objections as an instant ‘no’, automatically closing off the telephone call and moving onto the next prospect.

Remember, an objection is not a rejection. If the prospective customer is putting up an objection it means they are engaging you in conversation and actively discussing your product. It’s a way of them asking you for more information, inviting you to overcome their objections.

Handling objections is an essential part of a telemarketer’s arsenal and they should be welcomed as an opportunity to emphasise your products strengths, its suitability for the prospective customer, and a chance to demonstrate the depth of your product knowledge.

9. Don’t be coy about closing

A telemarketer should remember the primary objective for B2B appointment setting campaigns. To deliver sales appointments. Don’t be afraid to ‘close the deal’ and ask for an appointment with the decision maker.

If you reached this part of the conversation, then the DM will be expecting you to offer an appointment so don’t disappoint them.

Keeping control of the conversation at this stage is important. If the prospective customer sends the conversation down alternative routes, or is vague over their availability, then bring them back by suggesting specific dates.

When arranging the appointment it is also essential to confirm any additional contacts that need to be present. Whilst the Decision Maker will have the final say, there may be other Influencers and Information Gatherers that need to present.

10. In summary — summarise

Ambiguity leads to confusion and can leave both the prospective customer and the telemarketer leaving the conversation with different opinion on how it went.

Avoid confusion by summarising the conversation with the decision maker. Confirm the appointment date and time, recap the benefits the product offers and how it solves their particular business issues. Make sure both you and the customer are clear on what will happen next.

Improving your telemarketing results

By following these 10 tips for appointment setting you will improve the quality of your B2B telemarketing campaigns, achieve better outcomes and boost your sales team’s performance.

B2B CM are B2B telemarketing experts. If you’re looking for help with your appointment setting activity then call us on 0845 345 0545 or visit the contact B2B CM page.