How to Grow Fast by Outsourcing Your b2b sales Appointments Setting to an Agency

B2B appointment setting services have changed the way we get things done in a world where presentation is everything.

A company’s monthly revenue can be increased by collaborating with established professionals who have been trained in lead generation methods such as telecommunications, media, contractual proficiency, and optimized appointment setting.

When combined, a B2B appointment setup is the ideal strategy if you want to expand your business but need assistance with time management and organization. If you’re new to hiring, this is a good place to start.

What Does B2B Mean?

B2B is an abbreviation for business to business. B2B activities involve a company selling products or services to another company rather than to consumers.

What Is B2B Appointment Setting?

The goal of appointment setting is to connect your company with potential customers. The goal is to close a sale with these customers and, even better, to gain their loyalty. This is accomplished by setting up meetings between a sales representative and a potential client.

Appointment setters,  require effective communication skills as well as strong persuasive abilities to persuade potential clients to set aside their valuable time to listen to your sales pitch.

Why Is B2B Appointment Setting Important?

Setting up B2B appointments can help your company stand out. Failure to engage in these activities is essentially a death sentence for your company. As time spent on appointment setting and lead generation increases, so will the growth of your business.

The problem here is that you could call multiple numbers and not get a single person interested in your product or service for a long time, wasting both your time and money.

How Much Can I Expect Appointment Setting To Cost?

Appointment setting services are billed in two ways, according to Price It Here. Some businesses charge by the minute, ranging from $0.82 to $1.13. Other businesses use the pay per appointment method, which typically ranges between $9 and $25.

Why You Need B2B Appointment Setting

Setting up B2B meetings could help your company stand out. Your company’s success is jeopardized if you do not participate in activities. Lead production will increase as you devote more time and effort to appointment setting.

Hire an Appointment Setter as soon as possible.

A common issue we see here is that you may call several numbers and not get a single person interested in your product or service for an extended period of time, wasting your time and money. If you find yourself in this situation far too frequently, it’s time to seek assistance.

You save time and avoid losses when you outsource appointment setting to SEO and digital marketing firms. These companies use call centres to help you find and schedule appointments. You must provide information about your company’s availability or hours of operation, and they will set a time and schedule that works for both you and prospective clients.

But what exactly is the job description of an appointment setter? Their job is to call prospects, book appointments, and do the time-consuming preparation work for your sales team. When searching for the ideal team to work with, keep in mind that appointment setters must have excellent communication skills as well as strong persuasive abilities in order to persuade potential clients to listen to your sales pitch.

Appointment Setting And Predictable Growth In The 2020s

The fundamentals of appointment setting haven’t changed all that much. Once an opportunity to start a sales conversation has been identified (website hand-raisers, landing page form fills, cold email responses), someone or something must convert that interest into a scheduled appointment.

Outsourced appointment setting services have evolved beyond the dial-and-pray model of the past with the advent and proliferation of automation, AI, and chatbot technology in recent years.

Furthermore, watershed moments in sales development, such as the publication of Aaron Ross’ Predictable Revenue nearly ten years ago, heralded a new era of sales development and specialization. Sales specialization and outbound motions are now growth drivers. Filling the top of your funnel with qualified leads on a consistent basis is critical for forecasting future sales with predictable, cost-controlled growth.

Strategy and messaging, research, outreach activities, and appointment setting are the four pillars of sales development. The setting of the appointment, like the anchor runner in a 4100-meter relay, receives the glory. The other three runners are equally important, but the goal is to cross the finish line (or hit the quota).

Simply put, a good appointment setting is the result of a deliberate, well-executed sales development motion.

 

The Benefits of B2B Appointment Setting

Benefit #1: Attract Your Target Audience

Despite the fact that meeting your goals ensures a large return, being in the sales profession is difficult for anyone. For one thing, getting in touch with your ideal decision-maker is difficult. On average, it takes up to eight calls to reach a prospect, and 44 per cent of callers hang up after the first follow-up. As a result, salespeople miss out on potential sales and leave too soon. Qualified appointments necessitate extensive research, the necessary skills, and perseverance. Working with the right B2B appointment setting service can help you define your goals, gain actionable insights, develop success strategies, and attract your target audience.

Benefit #2: Boost Volume of Qualified Appointments

Outsourcing skilled B2B appointment setters will assist you in obtaining more qualified appointments and improving the quality of your leads. They will be able to connect with more prospects and, as a result of their expertise, will have a better chance of converting those prospects into loyal customers. Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) use well-researched and targeted leads to find key decision-makers and get past the gatekeeper. SDRs are tenacious and know how to overcome obstacles in addition to scheduling appointments. Expect appointments and meetings with ideal prospects with the right team, which are critical for business growth.

Benefit #3: Allow Better Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of establishing and strengthening relationships with potential customers. You must listen to your prospects’ needs and provide tools or solutions to their problems, which is critical but time-consuming. However, another advantage of B2B appointment setting is that agencies can handle the crucial prospect connection development and lead nurturing. With the right technology in place, a large number of leads, and the right timing, those leads will be nurtured and primed to benefit from your product or service.

Benefit #4: Enhance Efficiency of the Sales Team

Perhaps your company is ill-equipped to generate the necessary number or quality of leads, or perhaps your sales force spends too much time cold calling and fails to nurture the appropriate prospects. These are common roadblocks that salespeople face when they should be doing what they love: selling.

B2B appointment schedule keeps them from becoming ineffective in their primary function. Outsourcing your lead generation gives your sales team more time to focus on your business. They could then focus on generating warm, quality leads and closing sales for you.

Benefit #5: Increase and Stabilize Revenue

By outsourcing your B2B appointment setters, you increase your chances of earning more revenue while saving time and money. With this type of assistant, you can easily qualify prospects, generate qualifying leads, nurture those leads, and book appointments. And once your system is in place, you can build a solid sales pipeline. A strong sales pipeline enables you to schedule more appointments and convert more leads into paying customers. A strong sales pipeline, on the other hand, necessitates having the right team dedicated to lead generation, the right technology, and a strategy for monitoring your performance.

SALES APPOINTMENT SETTING IN-HOUSE VS. OUTSOURCED

If you believe that appointment setting could benefit your company, the next step is to figure out how to incorporate this extra step into your sales operations.

You have two options: use internal team members as appointment setters or outsource all appointment setting to an external agency so your reps can focus solely on selling.

Outsourcing has numerous advantages. Here are a few of the main advantages.

First and foremost, you can benefit from the expertise provided by an outside specialist agency.

Because prospecting is their core competency, a good sales appointment setting provider will have specialized knowledge and expertise. Even if you believe your in-house team is versatile and capable, they won’t have the same level of expertise if they aren’t professional appointment setters.

It’s also very scalable. If you have tight pipeline acceleration deadlines, you may not have time to recruit and onboard new employees. In this case, it makes more sense to outsource it to a third-party firm that can assist you in rapidly accelerating your pipeline.

When Outsourcing Isn’t A Fit

However, outsourcing the appointment setting role may not be the best fit for a company for a variety of reasons, including:

Your business model does not make sense in terms of outbound, let alone outsourcing, economics. The freemium SaaS, most B2C, and transactional business models stand out.

You want to organically grow your sales team and create a career path from sales development representative (SDR) to sales executive (SE).

You work in a field where a sales cycle cannot be divided into stages (i.e., appointments aren’t necessary).

You have economies of scale or a natural advantage in doing outbound marketing and cold calling yourself (e.g., you are also in the people business and can source talent affordably).

3 Things To Consider: Outsource Appointment Setting

Lead generation necessitates resources, deliberate effort, and patience. It is difficult to create a predictable pipeline. Hiring, training, and retaining top-tier sales development representatives are also more difficult than ever. Among the findings of The Bridge Group’s 2021 SDR Metrics Report are:

An SDR’s average tenure is only 1.8 years.

The average on-target earnings (OTE) compensation is more than $75,000 per year.

The most successful sales development organizations employ more sophisticated and costly sales technology stacks.

Scaling the sales development and appointment setting functions is one of the most difficult challenges to growth. Outsourcing appointment setting firms can provide the quickest path to market with today’s emphasis on going to market faster than the competition.

Scalability

Building out the hiring, training, compensation plans, and career development of an in-house SDR team takes time and resources. Growing SDR teams becomes an endless treadmill of recruiting, hiring, training, firing, and replacing talent at breakneck speed.

Those operational challenges are taken on by your partner when you outsource appointment scheduling services. You can scale up and down as needed by outsourcing your appointment setting without having to worry about hiring and firing. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

Cost-Controlled Expansion

The monthly cost remains constant when you outsource your appointment setting function to a subscription-based firm. Subscription-based models are less expensive than pay-per-appointment models (where the price can far exceed the appointment value).

When deciding whether to outsource lead generation and appointment setting, cost-controlled growth should be a major consideration.

Market Insights

Outsourcing is not only a wise choice for scaling and controlling growth, but it is also an excellent way to gain valuable market insights and establish market fit.

Market insights can range from learning how your prospects are currently solving problems to simply determining whether your value proposition is articulated well enough. When rebranding, entering new markets, or introducing new product lines/services, using an appointment setter to gain insights can be beneficial to both your inbound and outbound marketing efforts.

Lead generation firms should have experience engaging with prospects in their target market due to their breadth of experience setting appointments. The firm’s experience and knowledge can be immediately put to use to help you understand how to break into key accounts.

SIGNIFICANCE OF APPOINTMENT SETTING IN YOUR STRATEGY

So, how do you know if scheduling appointments is a good idea for your company? Here are some of the most telling signs that you’re ready to start an appointment setting process.

#1 YOU ARE NOT FINISHING ENOUGH DEALS.

If your team is struggling to meet sales targets, it may not be a problem with your reps, but with the quality of your leads.

Some customers will simply not be a good fit for what you’re selling and will not purchase, no matter how persuasive your sales representatives are. It goes without saying that you don’t want your team wasting time on leads that aren’t going to convert to sales, but that’s exactly what will happen if you don’t have an appointment setting process in place.

The appointment setting ensures that your reps spend their time with qualified leads who are interested in what you’re offering and are likely to buy, rather than those who aren’t.

As a result, once you incorporate appointment setting into your strategy, you should see an increase in your sales close rate.

#2 YOU ARE NOT TURNING OVER ENOUGH LEADS INTO PROSPECTS.

Building your sales pipeline entails more than just attracting new leads to the top of your funnel; it also entails converting those leads into ready-to-buy prospects.

If you’re having trouble nurturing your leads to the point where they’re ready to speak with your sales reps before they fall out of your funnel, lead appointment setting services could help.

A good appointment setter understands how to pique your prospects’ interest in what you’re offering and quickly qualify them. They can deliver your value proposition, handle customer objections, and identify their pain points to move them down your sales funnel and out when they’re ready to buy.

They know what questions to ask in order to identify the decision-makers within a prospective account and place them in a nurturing cycle or immediately qualify them.

#3 YOUR SALES TEAM IS OVERWORKED.

Your top sales reps should be focused on what is most important – closing deals. It will hurt your bottom line if they are stretched too thin prospecting for new leads and wasting their meetings nurturing prospects who aren’t ready to buy yet.

Not only that, but it’s also bad for morale. Speaking with dozens of unqualified leads who aren’t interested can be discouraging for your team, and low employee morale can have a negative impact on your performance. In fact, companies with high employee morale are found to be 21% more profitable, while those that prioritize employee engagement increase sales by 20%.

Professional appointment setters can handle the nurturing and moving your leads through the sales funnel for you, freeing up the time of your reps. This allows them to focus their efforts on what they do best: selling and closing deals.

#4 YOUR CUSTOMER DATABASE IS A WASTE OF TIME

Data is the foundation of sales success in 2021. You need to know as much as possible about who you’re contacting, why you’re contacting them, and why they might be interested in what you have to offer. That is why it is critical to keep your CRM’s customer data up to date and accurate.

If your CRM isn’t as clean as it should be, it could be an indication that you could benefit from a professional appointment setting service. Good appointment setters know how to elicit the information your sales reps require to close the deal from the prospects they speak with and record it in your database.

An appointment setting service can also help you manage your customer data more effectively. They can remove duplicates from your lists, match and merge them, and prioritize and segment your leads.

#5 YOUR SALES MEETINGS FEEL LIKE A FISHING TRIP

If the first meeting your customers have with your sales reps feels like a fishing expedition, this is a sure sign that you could benefit from an appointment setting.

Your sales reps should not be wasting time gathering information about what your customers require – the appointment setter should have already taken care of that.

They should be fully prepared for the meeting and have all of the information they need about the customer so that they can spend their time focusing on the real issues and solutions, as well as closing the deal.

#6 YOU’RE SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY.

Sales appointment setting can help you not only close more deals and increase revenue, but it can also help you streamline your sales operations and reduce costs. The appointment setting eliminates the need for sales reps to waste time gathering information, qualifying leads, and performing other tasks that reduce your ROI.

If you believe you are spending too much money on sales operations, you should consider outsourcing appointment setting to a company like Abstrakt.

Outsourcing eliminates the need to invest in ineffective overhead. You can increase the number of appointments you set without having to worry about finding, hiring, and training new sales representatives.

The Value of B2B Appointment Setting Services

If you don’t know what to invest in, this could be it. Simply think of these services as a tool for improving your company’s performance. Appointment setting services are well worth the investment because they pave the way for a better system that may work for your growing business.

In today’s modern society, fast-paced workplaces are the norm. To get started, hire a capable SEO and digital marketing agency that can assist your company is evolving with the times. However, if you don’t get help, you risk becoming overburdened. That is why working with a marketing agency is critical to your success. You will have more time to devote because you will delegate these time-consuming activities to the agency of your choice.

In a Nutshell

B2B appointment setting services are an essential part of your business’s future success. There’s no getting around the fact that digital competition is fierce. Despite recurring global crises, brands and businesses continue to grow, which may be scary to many startups and small-business owners. If you’re a business owner, now is the moment to step up your efforts and seize the opportunity to stand out. And to do so, you’ll need to hire outside aid. You can definitely go for appointment setting services.