I saw this chart on the Marketing Sherpa website, and I thought it was interesting and worth sharing. 1,000 B2B marketers were surveyed. The survey also explains that – four in 10 leads move from initial inquiry to being sales-ready.
Working with a firm like LeadGen, you will increase the number of prospects to help fuel your sales pipeline.
What other types of firms have you used to increase your sales prospects?
Is telemarketing a thing of the past or has it been repackaged as “Appointment Setting”? Is there a difference between telemarketing and appointment setting? Reviewing what was expected of telemarketers and what is expected of appointment setters, there is a large difference in the process and outcome.
Telemarketing is still being used currently as a form of sales. Think automatic dialers – you answer your phone – you say “hello” a few times – and finally someone on the other end starts talking. I personally usually hang up. I know they are trying to sell me something. Think of the forceful scripted conversations – where the caller does not take “no” for an answer. There is not an art of conversation. The conversation is very black and white. This is what I’m offering and I want you to buy it. The best is when someone calls you – and you can’t even understand them. Even if it is a product/service that you are interested in, can you imagine dealing with the company with any problems or questions?
If you were not able to get the words “not interested” in fast enough, they scheduled an appointment with you. Only to have frustrated sales people call upon you to find out that you had no interest in the product or service. Chances are – the telemarketing firm was paid by appointment – so they scheduled appointments for people who had little or no interest.
This is a true story; I received a call – several years ago from a caller who was asking for my husband. I let the caller know that he was not available – and I could tell by the mispronunciation of his first name that this was a telemarketer – and I asked very nicely to be removed from the list. The caller then proceeded to yell at me and told me that this was my spouse’s girlfriend calling. If only the company that this person was calling for could hear how she was representing their company. I’m sure they would be horrified.
Appointment Setting was developed from everything that telemarketing was doing wrong. Appointment setting firms wanted to differentiate itself from telemarketing firms by offering high quality employees that can carry on conversations with gatekeepers and top level executives to build trust and create a positive brand image of the company they are representing. They are often highly trained about the products and services that they are representing.
The appointments that they schedule represent them. Their appointments are high caliber. They prime the prospects for the sales team. They supply collateral material upon requests from the prospects. They are not just a nameless caller making appointments on your behalf – they develop a rapport with the prospects and sales team and work as an extension of the sales team.
Do you agree that telemarketing has not been repackaged as “Appointment Setting”?
We found this chart interesting and wanted to share it with you.
Do you have the same challenges when trying to generate sales leads?
Have you tried outsourcing your appointment setting?
I was looking at a recent LinkedIn posting – which asked this question: “What is the best lead generation technique?” The professionals that replied had several different techniques that they posted that I would like to share with you.
There is a common theme here – targeting and calling. For b2b sales, you will need to target companies that have a need for your product or service and then call them. Whether you hold a seminar or send an email, the next step is a call. Your sales cycle start with a call. That is what engages them and gets the momentum going.
How long does it take to turn a lead into a sale? How do I nurture a lead until it becomes a sale? People want results right away – they want to go to an appointment and close a sale in the same day. Typically it takes longer and there is a process to nurture the lead until it becomes a sale.
Our team at EAS LeadGen is an expert at nurturing prospects and turning them into appointments – which will curtail your nurturing time. There are many advantages to having appointments set for you:
Remember – to grow prospects, you need to have prospects.
How do you nurture leads?
Lead management is an important piece in the lead generation process. Here are four tips that are critical to your lead generation process:
Another important tip is your marketing options. Quoting an article about “Five Tips for Better Lead Management”, it says “Seek marketing programs that not only reach your target audience, but are able to generate and deliver leads with important information you need for proper lead management.” At EAS LeadGen, we target prospects and set appointments specific to your company’s needs. Information gathered during this process is provided to you to assess the current market conditions. Other marketing options such as direct mail and print advertising do not provide you with this type of information. Pairing LeadGen with a trade show or email campaign will help you follow-up with prospects, set appointments and gather information.
What type of follow-up do you have in place for your leads?
Many people make resolutions about getting in shape for the New Year, but what are they doing about sales? 2009 is over – done – past – it is time to think about the future – 2010 and beyond. What are your plans to get your sales back on track, to turn them around?
Hopefully you created a sales plan – similar to your exercise plan – with goals of dates and sales figures (instead of pounds). If you haven’t – there is still time. Did you remember to include changes in the sales climate from last year?
Has your competition changed? Unfortunately some companies did not make it through 2009, others have streamlined their businesses. Some of your competitors may not be there or they may not be offering what they were before. Some may have taken advantage of the economic climate and diversified by expanding their offerings. Research – get the picture of what is going on with them.
Has your company expanded or modified products/services? If this has changed – it is important to find out if there is new competition. Do your current customers know about the changes? How are you going to relay information about any expansions?
Has your pricing changed? Many companies changed their pricing to keep customers, to become more competitive or to keep profits the same. What did your competition do? If you made changes are they remaining or are there more changes on the horizon?
How has your company support changed? If there were cuts in personnel – this may have made a difference in ordering or customer service. What are you going to do to make sure clients feel that they are getting the same quality of service/product from you?
What are the new avenues for marketing? It should be safe to say that 2009 was the year of social media or an electronic form of guerilla marketing. What is the buzz for 2010? Print media still seems to be on the decline. Events such as seminars and trade shows may be picking up – they don’t create business unless there is follow-up. SEO is very important – but what do you do with the leads that come in? You can tweet, email, call and mail. Marketing dollars should be spent where you are going to get the best returns.
These pieces are important for your plan. But, if you are in sales – you strength is in selling. Will you be the one gathering this information? Is marketing doing it for you? You can outsource a firm to do this for you as well as marketing your product or service to prospects and making appointments for you to meet with them. This would put you in the field instead of gathering information. Choosing a firm that can do all of this will enable you to stay in the field and sell to the new prospects that are now in your sales pipeline.
We have all heard some terrible pick-up lines whether it was at a bar or at some party in college. Maybe some of us used them ourselves – but how does this apply to sales? How can you use a pick-up line to engage a prospect?
The sales process begins with prospecting and opening doors. Having a line that gets you in the door is a great way to start. We asked people “What is your best business pick-up line?” and we received terrific feedback.
Most of these questions lead to an open-ended answer – which will provide you with more information about the company. In sales, it’s key to be a good listener. You will hear cues about the needs of the company which will help you engage further with them.
Getting in the door, listening to a company’s needs and having the opportunity to present what your company can do for them is what EAS LeadGen specializes in. We break through the gatekeepers, gather information about what the needs are of an organization and schedule a face-to-face meeting for you with the decision maker.
Do you have a business pick-up line? What is it?
There’s also the consultative approach, which is the EAS LeadGen approach, for appointment setting. It is significantly different then the pay per appointment approach. The pay per appointment approach – you get what you measure which precludes any consultative thought. In the pay per appointment approach there is not any research before the call, there is no focus on trying to make a good call and there is no discussion among team members to derive the best strategy to an appointment. What about post call? What did the rep learn during the conversation? Pay for appointment will not incent anyone to capture or try to turn a “not now” conversation into one that captures market intelligence for the client – a really important by product of any consultative appointment setting effort.
At EAS LeadGen we are ex-Big 4 consultants. We are thinking about the triggers and touch points to get the appointments. Pay per appointment may work for transactional, “no thought”, run your finger down the phone book programs but in order to get appointments with C-levels and senior decision makers in the organization there is no way to justify a cost per appointment mentality.
If you could get the CFO of a Fortune 1000 to meet with you face-to-face – how much is that worth? Is it a homerun and you only need a handful per month to drive revenue? Or do you need 50 unqualified leads with people who are not decision makers? This is where the consultative approach, homework and a thought provoking conversation got the meeting. Do you realistically think that a pay for appointment type rep could obtain that CFO appointment? Yeah, I thought so.
With that said, there are great telemarketing firms – transactional – smile, dial and go home to second job. “Do you want the magazine subscription? No. OK, goodbye.” But, there are executive appointment setting firms – consultative, collaborative and strategic to get high value face to face appointments with the folks that usually create the budgets versus those that spend the budgets. Where do you want your sales people?
Which firm is working for you?
People have said, “Pay per appointment is the way to go”, when looking for appointment setting firms. When asked why they explain –“we received many appointments.” So – I wanted to do a little investigating to find out how it really works – and what are the advantages and disadvantages of a “Pay Per Appointment” firm.
Prior to working for EAS LeadGen, I worked for an organization that outsourced its appointment setting. We had hits and misses. But the hits and misses were with the appointments that were set. These were supposed to be legitimate leads and people interested in appointments. This firm was paid an hourly rate, it wasn’t much, and I guess, we received the quality that we paid for at this rate. But, the callers – as I will call them since I would not consider them a part of our company’s sales team, well – they received bonuses for scheduling appointments. That may be why there were so many bad appointments – or it could have been the quality. This firm is still out there.
Well – things have changed – and appointment setting companies have become more sophisticated. (This is where the investigation comes in.) Now there is something called the “point system”. Are you familiar with it? This is how if works:
Each appointment setter, (not a team member because they are in it for themselves and not for you) receives points for the number of appointments that they set. They have a minimum requirement of appointments that they need to set, then there is a threshold – which is the point they must cross to get paid a bonus. Depending on the level of ethics of the organization, the Account managers throw out some of their appointments to make it harder for them (callers) to reach their threshold. In response to these activities, the callers, to meet requirements, began to “throw up wood”. This is lots of bad appointments so THEY get paid – and this gets passed on to the clients. The incentive for the “callers” is not quality, but quantity.
So – if you are the client – you are paying top dollar per appointment. The appointment may not even be a good one, and you have people calling on your behalf, representing your company who only care about getting paid – not about setting a qualified appointment or representing your company the way it should be. Often these appointments are forced upon people. Is this how you want to be represented? As a marketing manager or a sales manager, you are still spending the money on the leads, but you are not seeing the results.
If you are given 50 appointments and 10 result in face-to-face meetings and you are able to convert 2 into sales or you are given 17 appointments and all 17 lead to face-to-face meetings and you are able to convert 7 into sales – which is better – quantity or quality?
Which gives you a better return on your investment?
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