How do you go about Appointment Setting?

Pretty much every company needs to sell in one way or another, and there are obviously many different ways to sell. For many of us though, we need to get in front of a potential client to be able to explain and describe the product or service we have to offer. The process of Appointment Booking is getting someone who may have never heard of your product or service to agree to meet with you to discuss it.  So how do you get a complete stranger to agree to sit down with you, (either face to face or over the telephone), for possibly an hour or so to discuss your product or service?

Here are 10 basic steps:

1. Source the data to call: Either using data you have already got, or by buying in data that has been reviewed to show target companies that you want to focus on.
2. Check data: The data is absolutely key, if you haven’t got the right data, you could end up wasting a huge amount of time either phoning the wrong type of companies or phoning data that is simply too old to use. So make sure your data is up to date, accurate, and targets the right type of companies and, of course, includes key information such as the telephone number.
3. TPS Checks: Depending upon how and where you have got the data from, it is more than likely that you will have to check whether any numbers on your list are registered on the TPS (Telephone Preference Service). If you have bought, or are buying in, the data, this should already have been completed. So make sure you do not call anyone that is listed on the TPS.
4. Prepare bullet points and objection handling:Prepare some basic bullet points to prepare for the call. Preparation is key, if you don’t know what you are going to say it will not only knock your confidence, but it will make you look highly unprofessional at the other end of the phone. Also be prepared to answers and objections, because you will get plenty, however if you can pre-empt these objections, again you are much more likely to succeed.
5. Prepare documentation to send out: Prepare some information either to post out to these contacts or to email. As most people will not agree to an appointment until they have read something about you and your company first.
6. Establish who the decision maker is and get contact details:  The first hurdle in calling is to get the details of the right contact that is a decision maker. Even if you have bought in the data, you still need to check who the correct person is to be speaking to. You could waste a lot of time convincing someone of the benefits of your product or service, only to find out down the line that they are not in a position to make a decision. So get the right contact details to start with.
7. Get agreement to send out information: Once you know you are speaking to the right person, use the bullet points you have already prepared to discuss the product or service you have to offer. This is not a sales pitch, you are looking to build lasting relationships and to do that you need persistence and patience. If you are lucky you may get an appointment on the first conversation with the decision maker, but this is generally rare. So you want agreement to send out some information that they can read in their own time. So send out an email and agree to call back in an agreed time-frame to discuss their thoughts.
8. Second call / future calls - gaining agreement to an appointment: Once the contact has received some information about your company and products/services, you now need to follow it up. In your follow-up call you want to see if they have read your information and if they are interested. The follow-up call may actually be drawn out over a number of conversations as you find that either the email has not reached them, they have not had a chance to read it, or they simply are not available. However once you finally speak to them and they have read it, it is at this point that you want to discuss the product or service in more detail and establish whether the contact will agree to an appointment. Remember appointments can either be by the telephone or in person.
9. Pre-qualify appointment: If you have someone else doing the calling for you and your product or service is complex it may be necessary to complete a pre-qualification call before the appointment is booked. This is where the caller has established that the contact is interested and would like an appointment, however to avoid wasting your time and the contact’s, you complete a pre-qualification call to ensure that your product or service is relevant to them. It is completely pointless and a huge waste of time to attend an appointment only to find that for one reason or another your product or service is not relevant.
10. Confirm appointment prior to meeting: Now that you have an appointment, you do not now want to waste your time or your contacts by somehow not getting the right date or time down, or by forgetting it! So always confirm the meeting details in writing. It is then always best practice to send a short reminder of the meeting a couple of days before the actual meeting.