There is no doubt that having a message delivered with a friendly, open phone voice helps ensure that your telemarketing appointment setting program is successful.
Telemarketing Appointment Setting Best Practices: Part 2
Author note: This is the second article in a 3-part series.
In Part 1, we discussed how to maximize the appointment kept rate when conducting telemarketing appointment setting. In addition, we introduced the 6 primary components of a successful telemarketing appointment setting program:
- A targeted contact list with phone numbers
- A friendly, open phone voice
- A nutshell message
- A reason for the prospect to schedule the appointment with you. WIIFM (What’s in it for me?)
- A timely calendar invite sent via email with a very brief summary of what will be discussed in the appointment
- Productive outbound dialing (we like to see about 35 dials per hour, 262 dials per day from a B2B telemarketing appointment setting program)
There is no doubt that having a powerful nutshell message delivered with a friendly, open phone voice helps ensure that your telemarketing appointment setting program is successful. In this article, I’ll share with you how to make this a reality.
Telemarketing Appointment Setting Requires an Effective Script
There is a fine line between selling an appointment and diving too deep toward selling the product or service that you’re setting the appointment to discuss. A successful telemarketing appointment setting program provides just enough information to peak the prospect’s interest, without putting the telemarketing agent in a position where they have so much information that they are tempted to go too deep in the appointment setting call.
Telemarketing appointment setting scripts have five primary sections:
- Who can the telemarketing agent speak to? This must be clearly defined. Setting an appointment with the wrong title or a non-decision-maker does not make sense.
- Nutshell message. Who is your company and what problem does your company/product/service solve? Why is your solution better than the competition?
- Ask for the appointment and keep the appointment date within the next 5 business days. One good option is to provide the “option close”. Does Tuesday at 10 am or Wednesday at 2 pm work better for you? We will need 20 to 30 minutes of your time.
- Close the conversation with an affirmation of what the prospect will learn during the appointment and how even if your product/solution isn’t a good fit, it won’t be a waste of their time. Let the prospect know that you’re sending a calendar invite and they should “accept” the invite right away so we can block off the sales exec’s calendar for the appointment.
- “Not Interested” rebuttal. Be prepared to restate why the solution you are presenting is unique and try to trigger curiosity for accepting an appointment with your company. Don’t restate the same information from your initial pitch. Instead give them some additional compelling information and ask them again for an appointment. Possibly give them an option for a shorter appointment so there is a lower threshold for the required time investment during the first appointment.
In the next article on this topic, I’ll share best practices for finding a good prospect list.
Other Articles You Might Find Interesting:
Telemarketing Company Tip: Add email to contact strategy
B2B Telemarketing Incentives
Maximize Results with B2B Outbound Marketing
Angela Garfinkel is the President and Founder of Telepromm, a leading outsourced telemarketing services organization serving the healthcare, financial services, automotive, market research, professional associations and numerous other B2B focused verticals. Angela has the pleasure of leading a talented team that runs thousands of outbound telemarketing program hours daily. Angela is also a certified Self-Regulatory Organization (SRO) auditor with the Professional Association for Customer Engagement and she is a designated Customer Engagement Compliance Professional (CECP). Angela can be reached at [email protected] or 516.656.5118
