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Appointment Setting is Perfect for Outsourcing
For businesses large and small, the ebb and flow of a client base is a natural part of business life. New companies are born while others close, merge, relocate, or elect to handle services in-house. For many companies, the ongoing marketing of their business-to-business telemarketing services is critical to their long-term success. Finding new clients is time consuming, and can be frustrating, taking the executive group away from other important aspects of the business.
For some businesses, a direct contact between people is required to complete the sale or provide the service. The challenge is getting the appointment with a potential client. The outsourcing of this service allows businesses to leverage experts in the area of appointment setting to be able take a potential client from expressing interest in your business's offer to setting up a specific time and day for a meeting between that potential client and an account representative from your company. This is still a relatively young and developing field and it requires special skill sets and special individuals to carry out the work. Typically, the successful people have two to five years serving the business-to-business marketplace. Furthermore, they usually have two-plus years experience of outbound, business-to-business cold calling and appointment setting.
It is not a job for wimps, energy, enthusiasm, honesty, diligence, ambition, and a results-oriented personality who appreciates a people-focused, integrity-based, relationship selling environment is just the start. They also need to have knowledge of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Contact Management software and be comfortable navigating through all levels of an organization. Naturally people with all of these special skills get higher remuneration than normal agents, and typically they are older and have been around the block, have well developed life skills are stress hardy and do not take rejection personally.
You might be looking at your sales teams and be thinking that there has to be a better way. You may need to increase the effectiveness of your sales teams or may find that your own skills are in the quite different fields of product development, support and consultation, that you are able to conduct professional face-face presentations but either don't have the time, or resource, to spend making the sales team more effective.
By outsourcing Appointment setting you are allowing a face to face sales person to better utilize his/her time by increasing the amount of qualified prospects seen. This motivates salespeople by creating confidence in the viability of new opportunities and importantly for management helps to build a dependable system for forecasting, projecting, and achieving sales goals.
When the outsourcer contacts a new prospect on your behalf, they represent your business with professionalism and a strong, targeted message to engage the prospect and lead to further contact. When your prospect is ready to meet with you, they set and confirm your appointments to ensure your sales teams’ time is optimally utilized.
Report on progress is usually done on a weekly basis, keeping you up-to-date with comprehensive reports including statistics on the number of calls, response rates, call back records, and appointments set. Call campaigns can be used as follow-up to direct mail and serve as indicators of a marketing campaign's success. The marketing manager loves the all the data and the ability to adjust marketing promotions on the fly.
While the advantage of using a third party vendor to assist your company is a wise choice, the most daunting task is locating a reliable and cost-effective service provider to partner with. That is where FooBooOnLine.com can help...
-- Martin Conboy
(Martin Conboy is the Founder and CEO of FooBooOnLine.com. He has extensive knowledge of Asia Pacific market trends and he is one of the most quoted commentators in the call center and outsourcing space in the in the Asia Pacific.)
The content on this site is Copyright © 2005 by FooBooOnLine.com & Contributors. These articles may be used for publication in magazines and newsletters with prior permission from the authors. Please contact Martin Conboy at info@foobooonline.com for further information |
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