News

Making Every Appointment Pregnant with Possibility

There are leads and then there are quality leads. The former is most likely a waste of time; the latter is pregnant with possibility.
Far too often those responsible for supplying business leads to the sales force are goaled on numbers rather than on qualification.

This can often be case with telemarketing companies that fail to do even the most elementary research on the prospect they are calling. How many times do we pick up the phone only to hear "Hello, can I speak to the person dealing with.........."

Where is the quality in that? Is that how we wish to be represented at our first exposure to a prospective customer? Pre-call research is essential, and with the Internet these days it is not hard to find names, even in those companies with no-name policies. Quality takes time and smarts. Without those, B2B appointment making will not be effective.

An Appointment Not at Any Cost

AQL consultants understand appointments gained by arm-twisting won't amount to anything. A sales appointment with someone too far down the food chain will just make you angry. An unqualified appointment is expensive and wasteful, especially now when costs need to be watched carefully. It can put someone on the road a day, keeping them from visiting a more likely prospect, and raising expectations that ultimately lead to disappointment. Ensure the person arranging the sales appointment has made it clear in detail why the prospect has agreed to the meeting. If you don’t know why, don’t go.

It must not be an appointment at any cost. If it is not with the decision maker, your presentation is unlikely to be successfully translated upwards. Since the recession, AQL has often found that the person who once held the decision making function and the budget, no longer controls the purse strings and has to bump the decision up to the MD or Financial Director. When this happens delay and disappointment can be the only result. If your meeting is arranged with someone who is not the decision maker, it’s better to wait until they are available. It will vastly improve the chance of doing business.

Using the Competition to Make Your Sale

A qualified appointment or business lead must have established a need for what you are offering, if not immediately then somewhere down the line. The best way to establish the need is to determine if the prospect is already using a competitor. Have your appointment setter ask what the prospect likes about their current supplier, and what they don't. What would be on their wish list. This is the kind of information that gives you a solid foot in the door, business leads that improves the odds of converting a prospect into a customer.

But If You Had the Budget……….

We are often reluctant to bring up money, especially at the qualification stage of a B2B appointment, but part of the quality process is to ask if the budget exists for what you are offering. If they respond negatively, don't necessarily give up, ask what they would want if they had the budget. A professional lead generation specialist talks about their desires rather than just their needs.

Intelligent Intelligence

Not every call will result in an appointment, nor should it. The call is the filtering process. If used as a professional B2B tool, it should pick up vast amounts of market intelligence you can use to refine your proposition, adjust market direction and overcome the competition. If you are not getting this, you're not getting quality.

<other news stories