Appointment Setters: Persistence vs. Annoyance
Successful appointment setters should have thick skin. People hang up on them frequently, or even yell at them for calling in the first place. The question for the successful appointment setter, after the first unsuccessful attempt, is when to call back, and how many times. Moreover, what tone to take on that second (or third) call.
Persistence is most definitely a virtue, but being a nuisance is not. Striking this balance consistently is a rare skill, and extremely valuable.
Appointment Setter Must: Respect the Prospect’s Time
Business-to-business appointment setting may seem similar in nature to generalized telemarketing, but it’s quite different in several important ways. One way in which business world appointment setting is different is the character of the prospects.
Telemarketers who call individual homes can, in many cases, expect to speak with people who were watching TV, eating some food, or just hanging out. Business-to-business appointment setters, on the other hand, are calling busy businesspeople, who have a load of e-mails to catch up on or are due at a meeting in three minutes.
That’s why successful appointment setters make it a point to respect the prospect’s time. In practice, this means getting to the point and, if the prospect can’t listen right now, calling back at a more appropriate time.
In fact, calling back at a more appropriate time is a tried and true trick of the appointment setter. After all, to simply blurt out a burst of pitch and then say goodbye is doing a disservice to the appointment setter’s client.
Appointment Setters Use Various Means of Communication
Sales communication, in the modern business world, entails using various tools to accomplish the same goal: getting the other person to hear the pitch, and become interested.
A telephone call can still be a very powerful thing when practiced by a skilled appointment setter, but some business decision-makers prefer to work via e-mail. In this case, the writing ability of an appointment setter comes into play.
A follow-up e-mail, rather than a second phone call, is another way of showing business decision-makers that an appointment setter is persistent, but does not wish to be intrusive by calling over and over again.
Good manners can make an impression on people.
Appointment Setters Need Not Apologize for Doing Their Job
It’s great to be nice, but it’s better to be effective. That’s why successful appointment setters never apologize for doing their job by calling prospects. At the end of the day, great appointment setting is not about making friends, but about setting appointments. Therefore, more than a little persistence is required.
Successful appointment setters turn objections into reasons to meet. No matter what the prospect heard or thought about a particular product or service before taking this appointment, wait until they take this appointment.
Of course, when an appointment setter really buys into the product or service being offered, it’s much easier and believable to be persistent in pushing that product or service without seeming pushy to the person on the other end of the line.
Selling ice to Eskimos, while possible, may not be a promising business long-term.
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