The role of an appointment setter is considered as one of the most challenging within a business, especially for start-ups and SMEs. Without appointment setters who serve as your company’s front liners, you won’t be able to sell your products or services to potential clients. Remember that good first impressions go a long way, and if you don’t get prospects interested in meeting a salesperson, then you won’t be able to increase your sales.
What is an Appointment Setter?
Appointment setters are members of a sales team responsible for setting sales appointments between a company and a potential client. Basically, what they do is make initial contact with leads, preparing the leads for the outreach before a salesperson can start a conversation with them via social media, email, or a phone call. Their other responsibilities include:
- Familiarizing themselves with your company’s products or services
- Taking calls from prospective clients to answer basic questions and address simple concerns
- Directing prospective clients to the right person who can adequately answer their questions
- Keeping a detailed log of calls taken, made, or missed
- Keeping a record of recurrent complaints about your products or services
- Reporting to the Sales Manager about complaints and issues that need to be addressed
But how exactly does hiring an appointment setter for your business play to your advantage? Here are the top 6 benefits of hiring one:
1. Run more successful lead generation campaigns.
Hiring the right appointment setters matters. If you manage to snag yourself one or two of them, you will be gaining volume in no time with their effective lead generation plan. Here are some characteristics of appointment setters that enable them to run successful campaigns:
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Outstanding Communication Skills
They are great communicators, especially in the art of verbal communication. Yes, they do follow a script when communicating with leads, but they know how to improve it and make sure that it has all the right elements, especially a well-crafted branded introduction that highlights who you are as a company, and most importantly, gets leads listening.
They are also great listeners who are not only concerned about following the script. They know which information to take note of, such as specific business needs, so they are able to answer questions clearly and sufficiently.
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Grace Under Pressure
It’s common for appointment setters to encounter objections and rejections on the job. However, one of the characteristics that make great appointment setters is their ability to handle these roadblocks professionally. They have long prepared themselves from the possibility of getting a lot of NOs from leads, so they know how to properly respond to “I don’t have the time to talk.” or “Sorry, maybe another time.”
Rockstar appointment setters do not let a rude lead affect their call with the next one because they know that doing so influences their tone, which can be picked up by the next lead. They are able to keep their cool and stay professional in all their calls.
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Critical Thinking Skills
Because appointment setters cannot rely on the script, they must have the ability to think quickly and provide a suitable response to the leads when the situation calls for it. They know that their responses can mean the difference between losing and converting a lead, and seasoned appointment setters always know what to say.
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Commitment
Imagine calling a number of people on a daily basis. It can be quite stressful talking to a bunch of strangers with different personalities and needs. However, professional appointment setters are committed to the task regardless of this challenge. They understand that what they do has a huge impact on the success of your business, so they pick up that phone with a smile on their face and a renewed spirit.
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Organising Skills
For a lead generation campaign to be successful, appointment setters should be able to take note of important details, such as dates, time, and venues of meetings. Therefore, they are expected to have advanced organising skills. Your business cannot afford losing any important information or mixing them up, so if you are going to hire an appointment setter, make sure that the person you choose is detail-orientated and obsessed about putting things in their right order.
2. Increase business sales and reputation.
Hiring an appointment setter increases your appointment count, which helps increase your business sales. However, your reputation also matters. Both appointment counts and sales can dramatically drop due to a bad image, and appointment setters play a huge role in maintaining or improving your company’s reputation.
Appointment setters are expected to exude confidence and maturity when speaking to people they don’t know every single day. Their confidence and maturity allow them to maintain a positive attitude, which is a sign of professionalism.
At the end of the day, appointment setters know that it’s just a job. They do not take things personally. When a lead comes off rude or rejects them, they do not easily lose their cool. Instead, they nonchalantly and politely respond to protect the reputation of your business. They avoid sounding arrogant as this increases tension and aggravates the situation, which can cause you a potential client.
3. Free up some time to do things only you can do.
Managing a business takes up a lot of time, and sometimes it can get overwhelming even for you. Setting up appointments and blocking your calendar may be harder to accomplish as you’ve got bigger things to take care of.
By hiring an appointment setter, you gain more time for bigger tasks–task that only you can do. Moreover, your pipeline never has to run dry because someone else is taking care of it. This results in increasing your potential to grow your revenue.
4. Save yourself from cold call reluctance.
Admit it or not, not everyone is good on the phone. Some people, even successful business owners, experience cold call reluctance. This reluctance is enough to discourage you from picking up the phone and starting a conversation with a complete stranger, and that’s a pretty valid fear.
It’s quite challenging to hype yourself up and say that a call will go well. After all, there’s a multitude of possibilities. You can experience rejection, accusations, complaints, and just plain rudeness. With a professional appointment setter, though, you can be sure that they are prepared to handle such situations, so hiring one for your business can definitely take a load off your back.
5. Gain more quality clients.
The duties and responsibilities of appointment setters may sound simple, but they aren’t at all. Theirs are one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish in terms of generating sales leads.
Appointment setting requires more than picking up the phone and cold calling leads. It involves qualifying the leads based on their likelihood of making a purchase or subscribing to your services, which is a huge responsibility.
Experienced appointment setters can identify a quality lead before and during their conversation with them. By quality leads, we mean those who are more likely to convert than others. If your appointment setters are effective and efficient, you can always set appointments with the right buyers as a result.
6. Have a better alternative to hiring a telemarketing firm.
You may think that hiring a telemarketing firm to set appointments for you is a good idea but that’s not the case all the time. You may find it reassuring that someone is doing the dialing for you. However, four to six months into your partnership with the firm, you will realise that you don’t really know who’s setting appointments on your behalf. They are not as invested in your business because they are not technically part of it. In effect, they don’t really know who you are as a company. The results you get may not be as consistent as you want them to be.
Conversely, hiring an appointment setter via a full-service BPO like Remote Staff is a better alternative. Why? Because we do not just give you any appointment setter. We provide you with pre-screened Filipino candidates that we believe may be the right fit for your business needs. You can also be sure that you are getting the best value for your money as the rates of our appointment setters are true to the local market rate.
Choosing the right appointment setter is an important decision, especially if you are a small business that’s starting out or starting to get more volume. Try not to look for someone who has the best voice or personality because appointment setting is more than that. Think of appointment setters as Wall Street closers. It takes more than just good looks and smooth talk to charm their way into closing deals. Therefore, try to base your hiring decision on more important factors such as their passion for the job, creativity, critical thinking skills, ability to make decisions on the fly, and of course, their desire to help your business grow.
