How to get high quality B2B appointments

The backbone of any telemarketing campaign is quality appointments

Good appointments are not difficult to achieve but are essential to the success of any project both for appointment setting and lead generation alike.  The most important ingredient of a good appointment is information, asking probing questions on a call provides key information to help prepare for the meeting.

Question your questioning technique

Open questions can provide invaluable information about a prospect’s needs, their short fallings with their current provider but also “pain points” that they experience. These questions can enable the sales person to tailor their approach at the face to face based on the individuals’ needs.

In addition to this, good questioning will also ensure that the company is actually within the target criteria, there may be certain prerequisites that Sales need to have established (number of users, minimum turnover etc) before sitting an appointment.

Is Yes always enough?

Often on new campaigns, new starters or those eager to achieve good results will often “steamroller” the prospect into an appointment, asking no informative questions or probing for any need. An early “yes” from a prospect in a call doesn’t always indicate an actual need for the product but more than likely just a curiosity into what it is about. These more often than not are cancelled or lead to nothing.

Go as close to the top as you can get

The prospect’s position within the business can also prove critical, you may have an appointment with a staff member that has some involvement in the area but not in the physical decision making progress, this may add another unnecessary step to the selling process as they will have to pass all the information exchanged at the meeting up the scale to the next level of management, delaying the end point of the sale and running the risk of diluted information being passed on.

It’s worth the extra work

Poor preparation can more often than not result in wasted time.  Focus on quality qualification and thoughtful targeting and you will see conversions increase, lead scoring improve and ultimately a happier, better performing sales force.