How to Choose a B2B Appointment Setting Company
B2B appointment setting is a proven business growth strategy that, when done right, can help you close more deals and increase your profit margins. Due to the complicated B2B sales process, an increasing number of companies are opting to hire outsourced appointment-setting agencies. Appointment-setting agencies can offer cost-effective solutions that fill your sales pipeline with high-quality leads and speed up the B2B sales process. If your sales aren’t where you’d like them to be, read on to learn how B2B appointment setting can benefit your company and help you reach your sales goals.
The Importance of B2B Appointment Setting
While it can be tempting for many small-to-medium-sized businesses to rely on referrals, this isn’t a sustainable long-term approach. To meet your sales goals, you need a strategy for consistently getting your product or service in front of key decision-makers. This is why an effective B2B appointment-setting strategy is crucial for growing your company.
B2B appointment-setting is the process of reaching out to prospective clients to convince them to schedule a meeting, demo, or presentation with a sales rep. Appointment setters, usually sales reps or SDRs (sales development representatives), work to optimize lead-generation efforts through emails, phone calls, lead qualification, research, personalization, and relationship-building. On top of filling your sales calendar with high-quality leads, this strategy also increases brand awareness, spreads consistent messaging, and builds relationships with individuals as well as other companies that have similar values.
Despite being an effective business growth strategy, many companies are unfortunately unaware of the steps required for a sustainable appointment-setting strategy. While appointment setting seems like a simple concept, the process itself is more complicated even for experienced SDRs.
A successful B2B appointment-setting strategy must include:
- Lead generation
You need a strategy for how to find prospects, whether it be through a database, social media, or other means. Consider your target audience and which spaces and platforms they are likely to be found on so you can effectively bring them into your sales pipeline. - Lead qualification
Once leads have been generated, they need to be researched and qualified. This allows SDRs to focus on pursuing and setting appointments exclusively with leads that meet the criteria for your ideal customer rather than wasting time contacting unqualified leads. - Lead nurturing
A crucial component of B2B appointment-setting, lead nurturing builds relationships and reminds potential clients that you haven’t forgotten about them or their business. Additionally, a lead may take on a new role or move to a new company that could benefit from your product, so by taking the time to truly nurture a lead, you increase the likelihood of closing future sales. - Appointment Setting
Setting an appointment is the last part of the sales process. SDRs schedule a meeting between the prospect and your internal sales reps, who can then present a customized pitch that will increase their likelihood of the prospect’s conversion. Keep in mind that some prospective clients may cancel their meeting for a variety of reasons, so make sure not to close out this step until you have re-scheduled them for a new meeting.
If your in-house sales team doesn’t have the resources or manpower to fully commit to each of these stages, it might be time to outsource.
Benefits of an Effective B2B Appointment-Setting Strategy
If you’re curious about appointment-setting services, here are some of the ways outsourcing can benefit your company and help you reach your sales goals.
- Speed up the sales process
An appointment-setting agency with experience in your industry can significantly speed up the sales process. They have access to software and data that allow them to quickly build effective campaigns for your target market and generate quality leads. It can be difficult and time-consuming for SDRs to find the correct contact information for key decision-makers. Once they have their contact information, SDRs often need to make over ten attempts to contact a lead before they successfully reach them. Agencies that specialize in appointment setting have software and pre-established relationships that enable them to contact decision-makers quickly. This rapidly speeds up the time between first contact and scheduling a meeting. - Spread brand awareness
Appointment setting is also an efficient tool for spreading brand awareness and consistent messaging. B2B appointment setters use multiple channels to generate leads, such as social media, email, and cold calling, which can be used as a marketing opportunity, even if the lead doesn’t initially agree to schedule an appointment. Prospective clients may or may not have heard of your product, so with the use of high-quality marketing collateral and sales enablement materials, appointment setters can spread awareness of your product or service. Sometimes a lead isn’t a perfect fit, but with the right appointment-setting approach, it can be used as an opportunity to spread positive word-of-mouth or gain referrals. - Increase efficiency
B2B appointment setting can be particularly arduous. Key decision-makers with purchasing authority have busy schedules and can be difficult to get ahold of. They have in-depth knowledge about their industry and what solutions are on the market, so they are likely to know about your product as well as your competitors. Further complicating things is the fact that B2B sales typically involve multiple decision-makers with overlapping roles, requiring SDRs to make numerous pitches before they’re able to schedule a meeting. By opting to outsource appointment setting, your in-house sales team can use their time to focus on qualified leads instead of spending hours prospecting and qualifying leads. - Nurture more leads
Failing to follow up with leads is a common mistake made by sales reps trying to use their time wisely. Research has found that despite 80% of sales being made after 5-12 contacts, only 8% of salespeople try to make contact after a fifth attempt. Additionally, B2B sales have a longer sales cycle that can range from three to twelve months, depending on the scope of the sale. If your in-house team doesn’t have the time, capacity, or ability to track the number of contacts made and repeatedly follow up, you could miss a lot of sales opportunities. By opting to outsource appointment setting to an agency, you have a team that can dedicate their time exclusively to chasing and nurturing leads for an extended amount of time. This means more high-quality leads make it into your sales pipeline, and fewer fall through the cracks. - Cost-effective
Hiring and training an expert sales team is an expensive and time-consuming process. You can spend months hiring and training a team, only for them to not meet your expectations or burn out quickly, leaving you in a seemingly endless hiring and firing cycle. Outbound appointment setting also requires multiple pricy software licenses, something that is particularly true for B2B sales. An agency specializing in appointment-setting will already have the necessary software and equipment, saving you money on software licensing as well as on office space and other tools. An outsourced team is also easily scalable and more flexible to your evolving needs than an in-house team would be. Additionally, some appointment-setting agencies offer pay-per-appointment lead generation services, allowing you to only pay for confirmed meetings, further helping your bottom line. - Reach your target market
Once you’ve defined and researched your target market, breaking in can still be challenging and take multiple tries. If your in-house sales team is stretched too thin, they may not have the time to continually reach out to seemingly unresponsive leads. An outsourced team will always have the time and resources to make data-driven adjustments to your outreach strategy to ensure you’re effectively reaching the entirety of your target market. - Market research
An appointment-setting agency can give you access to a plethora of usable market research. Effective outreach requires extensive research into your target market, which provides valuable insights for your company and provides SDRs with the information they need for personalization. Beyond research, SDRs speak directly with leads which can provide unique insights directly from your target audience. These insights can be used by your company across multiple departments. For example, such insights are useful to marketing departments for refining their messaging, sales teams for fine-tuning their pitches, and development and production can learn about what services or features your target audience is looking for. - Expand to new markets
Expanding into new markets can be a complicated process that drains resources if not done properly. With the data and market research that appointment-setting services have access to, they can help you build an effective and cost-efficient plan for expanding into new markets. By using real-time analytics, they can quickly and easily adjust strategies to improve and maximize your results. This can be particularly helpful if you’re looking to expand to new regional or global markets, as it significantly speeds up the expansion process.
Choosing the Right Channel for B2B Appointment Setting
While it’s best to use multiple outreach channels, it’s vital to be strategic about which channels are most relevant to your target audience. Social media may be great for approaching some leads, while email works better with others. LinkedIn is often a great way to approach prospective clients but isn’t always best, depending on the industry and audience. For example, Xing may be more relevant for specific audiences in Germany. The right appointment-setting company will know the right channels and which approach methods to use based on in-depth research into the prospective client. To find out how outsourcing appointment-setting can help you reach your sales goals, schedule an introductory call today!
