Sell The Meeting: Set Discovery Calls & Sales Appointments To Close New Accounts: A Lead Generation Process With Phone Script Samples For B2B Appointment Setting & Cold Calling

by Scott Channell

No calls. No opportunities. No closed deals.

Fanatical prospecting

It is the most normal and natural thing in the world for these future buyers to meet with you. It is the most normal and natural thing in the world for you to ask them to do so.

Assuming that you have a quality offering, you are doing them a favor by doing so. Many of these buyers will make the wrong decision. They will choose to work with a company not as good as yours, select a product or service not equal to yours. They will get less value for their time and money, and they will suffer the consequences of not being fully informed on all their options and factors relevant to their buy decision.

Fear of the consequences of no sales or few sales should drive you partially, but the biggest motivator should be that there are buyers out there. They are buying from someone else right now because they never met you.

It is a tool. A step in a process. Neither good or bad. Like any marketing tool, it is right to use in some spots, not others.

First, your best prospects are better informed.

Second, your prospects don’t trust you.

Unless you are perceived to be rock solid and head and shoulders above the rest, the risk/reward calculus works against you.

Why should they take the risk, again, that some unknown entity will be worth their time when fairly quickly they can let their fingers do the walking over their keyboard and find top-notch credible vendor options worth a meeting? They won’t unless you give them very good reasons to do so.

Your messaging, your call process, the efficiency with which you work has to be better and much tighter to set appointments today. There is far less wiggle room if you are not totally prepared, very efficient, and quickly and succinctly communicate value and credibility.

Tools and marketing methods that would not make economic sense among average or lower value targets generate high ROI when used with higher value targets identified through your calling efforts.

If you are perceived to be “another one,” you are toast. You must communicate more credibility and benefits than the rest, or your prospect will let their fingers do the walking over their keyboards to select potential new vendor options.

If you skip the basics, you are building on sand. If you follow the herd, you will get mediocrity at best; you will be doomed to again and again trying the latest “new” thing that changes it all or the “one thing” that will make all the difference. Your personal results needle won’t move. You will still be in the middle or near the bottom of the pack. Awareness and mastery of the basics of appointment setting can drive a sales advantage. With a solid foundation in place, you can adapt and thrive in almost any environment.

When you can generate a steady stream of first sales conversations, you won’t feel pressure to cut your profit margin to seal a deal. You won’t be tempted to make unrealistic promises or work outside of your service delivery systems.

You didn't identify them or get their attention. You were not there at the right time.

If you did speak to them or get their attention briefly, your messaging did not adequately communicate your value or credibility. That opportunity to clone your best accounts was lost at “hello.”

Think of appointment setting as a tool to be used as needed. You might use it very strategically to infiltrate a new vertical. You might use it to avert trouble when business slows down. You might use it day in and day out as the core of your new business process.

Not always relevant

You will shortly have to cross the “Prospecting Chasm” where you have to prospect, sell, and service accounts. It is extremely tough for you to do all three functions superbly.

Full cycle AE

You are in charge. Not your prospects. Not your clients. You.

You see, when you know (really know) and have confidence that new leads and inquiries will continue to come on schedule as a result of your system, you’re going to be far more selective about whom you choose to do business with. You’ll know from experience that a certain percentage of those leads, inquiries, and appointments/calls will convert to new accounts.

You will have the confidence to say “no” to business that isn't what you want.

As you develop a steady stream of inquiries and appointments, you will learn which are most likely to convert to profitable accounts. You can make a conscious decision as to where to allocate your time for best results.

If you do not fully leverage all the value you can obtain from your calling efforts; you leave a lot of money on the table.

What do you do with the majority of people you cannot initially reach? What do you do with the majority of people who you do reach, yet don’t immediately agree to see you? Are those calls wasted? Far from it.

You are making the calls anyway. You must have a strategy and make an effort to determine the potential worth of those you call, even when you do not speak to your target.

As important as it is to identify qualified and high potential worth accounts, it is even more important that you proactively identify and stop investing time with low or no potential value accounts as early as you can.

A big part of success is enabling those who say “get lost” now, to invite you to call in the future. You need to have a strategy for that.

And let me say this, the strategy is not saying “OK, can I call back and check in in a few months?”

So as you call, call, call, and your pot of qualified targets with above average value grows larger and larger, what do you do? Just call them back sometime? Not if you want to make mad money and fat stacks.

Inexpensive, consistent touches delivered to a high-value, high-probability audience will generate you outsized rewards for a small additional investment of time and money. Even simple letters, well written and sent out consistently, deliver major rewards when targeted to that very small segment of your target group that has the most value and potential.

Groove campaigns over long periods

When people are touched by you consistently over some time, they become better educated about the benefits you can provide them. When they hear a consistent message over that period, you create a perception of credibility in their eyes.

Those you identify that have the highest potential value and those that indicate a buy decision shortly are worth a little more time and effort. To get the full value for your efforts, you must be set up to deliver “touches” consistently to this group.

Create a campaign for those i get ahold of on the phone

The sad truth is that many companies are spending far too much time calling the less worthy.

Because they were in front of higher quality prospects, this client got more practice and became more proficient at each step of the sales process.

The biggest investment of time is your initial foray to the prospect. The largest dollar expense is buying the target list, getting it into the database, and investing the time to work it. Easy follow-up is something planned for before you make your first call. Follow-up can be simple when you have planned for it and you work with “groups” of prospects.

You must have core beliefs and act consistently with those core beliefs if you are to have a successful program.

Example: You can’t believe that “people are busy,” “get to the point,” “respect people’s time,” and “keep it short” and then open up your calls with “how are you?” “Have you got a minute?” and “I know you are busy; I will keep it short.” Those actions are inconsistent with your core beliefs.

Every action, every script, every call pattern, how you purposely allocate your time, what you will measure, all must be consistent with certain rules. Know them and thrive. Ignore them, and you will waste your time and miss out on opportunities.

1. The Buyers Are Out There

2. Don’t Try To “Convince” Anybody of Anything

You are not trying to instill something that does not already exist in people. You are looking for those that on some level recognize a need or dissatisfaction and will buy or change vendors shortly. Those are “buyers.”

3. Everything You Do, You Do At The Expense of Something Else

Are you engaging in a higher probability, higher value action or a lower probability, lower value action? You must know the difference.

You do not want to call crap at all, but you also want to call what is not crap in order of priority. You want to call all your “A” records before you call your “C” records, and call your “C” records before you call your barely acceptable worth less than average “D” records.

Those that are best at finding gold are best at determining what is not gold. You must “actively disqualify” every step of the way.

Be determined to identify and not call records not worth your time and reprioritize what is worth calling. The better job you do at identifying and not calling or not continuing to call low-prob, no-prob, low-value suspects guess what? The more time you have to call high-probability higher-value targets.

5. “Bump” Into More People At The Right Time. You Must Engineer Prospecting Velocity.

6. Know Your Point of Diminishing Returns

8. #1 Reason People Don’t Agree to Meet with You. You Don’t Give Them Enough Reason to Meet With You.

If you are connecting with people on the phone who recognize a need you can fulfill, and they are not receptive to your message, this is happening for the simple reason that you have not given them enough reason to agree.