Salespeople need to be good at appointment setting and lead generation to grow a business. As the business world changes, so too do the number of skills and activities that your sales team needs to demonstrate. Just like a Swiss Army Knife, members of the team are inevitably better suited to some challenges than others.
The phone is still the salesperson’s greatest weapon in appointment setting, but if used incorrectly (or not at all) it can be their greatest weakness, no matter how good their lead generation is. The simple fact is that it doesn’t matter how good you are at building relationships, or how great your presentations look if you can’t get in front of a prospect to build that relationship or give the presentation in the first place.
Studies have shown that by having a specialism in your sales team, where each person is responsible for a specific section of the sales process, that you’ll book more appointments – and in truth, it gives larger businesses an unfair advantage.
By putting a team of specialists in place you allow each person to focus on their strengths, leaving you with a process that looks something like:
Identify
- Marketing passes a lead to the appointment setters by identifying ideal clients
Qualify
- Appointment setting then follows up on the lead and qualify further. The ideal outcome being a qualified appointment with the closing team or, if they are not ready, hand back to marketing for further nurturing
Retain & Grow
- Once an appointment has confirmed either face to face, by phone, or online demonstration we pass it to the relevant closer to close the deal
- Assuming a successful meeting and the lead is now a client, you can then pass them onto account management for the long term
Of course, not every organisation is big enough to support such a team structure, or you might be looking to bring in a new approach – this is where an outsourced lead generation and appointment-setting service comes in.
An appointment-setting service, like the one offered here at Virtual Sales Team, will allow you and your team to focus on the “Retain and Grow” stage of the sales process – increasing sales efficiency because your team will be working with pre-qualified appointments. Appointments are generated from your own lead generation sources such as your marketing campaigns or outsourced to businesses like Virtual Sales team lead generators based on pre-sourced data that introduces your team to their ideal client.
The final piece of the puzzle is the lead researcher. This really is the role of the organised hero. Using platforms such as LinkedIn to identify companies that you want to work with. They then call into the company to verify their requirements – this is the crucial part.
The objective here is not to get a qualification for an appointment, but to simply identify that there may be a requirement for your services. Their role is to intelligently identify businesses, leaving your outbound prospectors or telemarketing team to get that all-important initial meeting.
Sales is all about working smarter. With the ever-changing face of modern business, you need to work to the strengths of your team members – and exploit targeted outsourcing services.
