When you are a salesperson, you will always have two goals. Your ultimate goal is to close the sale and get a new client. Your immediate goal is to get the prospect to move to the next stage in your sales process.
The Best Appointment Setting Strategies
Focus on the right goal.
When you are a salesperson, you will always have two goals. Your ultimate goal is to close the sale and get a new client. Your immediate goal is to get the prospect to move to the next stage in your sales process.
We mention focusing on the right goal in our appointment setting tips because it can be easy for us to primarily focus on the ultimate goal of closing the sale when we get a prospect on the phone. You will improve your results by ignoring that desire and focus solely on closing for the next step which is setting the appointment.
Don’t sound like a salesperson.
Your prospects will get a lot of calls from salespeople and many of these salespeople will waste the prospect’s time. This will create a level of guardedness on the prospect’s side.
Decrease the amount of guardedness that you create by minimizing how much you sound like a salesperson trying to sell something.
Confirm that the prospect is available for the call.
This is one of the more debatable appointment setting tips as many people will disagree, but we suggest that you open your call by confirming that the prospect is available by asking if you have caught the prospect in the middle of anything.
This small change can show the prospect that you respect them and their time and it can buy you 2 to 5 minutes to work with when the prospect says they are available.
Share an elevator pitch.
Once you confirm that the prospect is available, share some sort of elevator pitch. This should be one to two sentences that communicate how you can help the prospect.
Your elevator pitch could be a value statement or value proposition, it could be some pain point examples, or it could be a quick past client example.
Ask good probing sales questions.
The best salesperson is the one that asks the best questions. As a result, one of our key appointment setting tips is to develop some good questions to ask the prospect during the call.
Not only will good probing sales questions help you to gather some valuable information from the prospect, they will help to make the call more engaging and interactive.
Prepare for common sales objections.
You are going to get objections when you are making B2B cold calls. Instead of trying to figure out how to respond to an objection when you are on a live call, stop to outline the objections that you can anticipate ahead of time and prepare some responses that will help you to keep calls going.
Build enough interest to close for the appointment.
As we mentioned, your immediate goal is not necessarily to sell the product and is more so to set the appointment. As a result, you don’t need to build the prospect’s level of interest so that they purchase. You need to build just enough interest and curiosity so that the prospect wants to continue the conversation.
We hope these appointment setting tips help you to take your game to the next level.
Stop Selling
Yes, you did read that heading correctly.
Salespeople have a natural inclination to want to sell a product when interacting with a potential buyer. Nobody wants to have something pushed upon them.
Instead, appointment setting calls are designed to intrigue a prospect enough to get a face-to-face meeting.
Your goal is to set an appointment, not sell them something. (Or as in the case of our friend John, a demonstration of the service.)
By calling with a genuine desire to help, it is easier for salespeople not to pressure prospects.
Don’t force the issue.
Instead, reps should call with a sincere belief that they are trying to help a prospect out of a situation or predicament. This helpful tone is less likely to offend buyers or put them on guard.
Remember, your goal is to arrange a meeting so don’t lose focus of that.
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