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?

Tags: appointment setting, cold calling, EAS LeadGen, executive appointment setting, lead gen, lead generation, leads, pay per lead, Sales, sales pipeline, telemarketing