I recently sat in on a training session with a cold-calling guru that advocated scheduling just a "15 minute" meeting to get in front of senior executives.

15 minutes? Is it really worth it?

This isn't anything new; I blogged about this back in 2006 having witnessed this same thing in a classic "boiler-room" appointment setting company (see "The Meetings Game": Some truths about B2B Appointment Setting).

So, is it worth just going for 15 minutes?

Without doubt, the less you ask for the higher the conversion you'll get.

Going for a telephone call will pull more results than going for an more traditional 1 hour meeting.

Years ago when I ran a sales team with reps "in the area" we would always push for a "15 minute drop in" just to put a "face to a name".

Our pitch would go something like "Look, we'll both know in the first 10 minutes if this is something for you; let's put aside just 15 minutes and, if you think it's worthwhile then I'll stay longer".

That always worked a charm.

But, that was because we were "in the area", so it was actually a productive use of our time. Plus, the number of meetings attended was a metric.

For most of our clients, however, this isn't the case.

When we're booking appointments with senior decision makers we're usually committing our clients to a long journey which usually results in breaking up their whole day. We need to make absolutely sure that it's worth their time attending.

So, on balance, I prefer to play everything with a straight bat and only book appointments where there is a clearly qualify interest in meeting.

That means a lower conversion than if you shoot for "just 15 minutes".

I only advocate softening my stance on this if I had a very tight wish-list and found going for a longer meeting wasn't getting traction.

But then you need to think beyond those first 15 minutes.

Our clients would need a rock solid process to turn that 15 minutes into a second, longer and more productive meeting.

Otherwise, they really will be wasting their time.

Labels: appointment making, appointment setting

I came across an interesting piece on Inside Sales from the Bridge Group based in the US.

They've published a "Periodic Table of Inside Sales Metrics", which is an interesting way of presenting many of the metrics they've researched.

The Bridge Group specialises in consulting on Inside Sales for technology vendors and their president, Trish Bertuzzi, is founder and manager of the Inside Sales Experts group on LinkedIn.

Looking at the metrics they present, there are some interesting ones from a telesales perspective (what we would typically refer to "Inside Sales" as in the UK)

Under lead generation, the average quota for appointments per inside sales rep is 16 per month. Also, the average hours per day on the phone for lead generation is 4 hours.

Now, I know from reading other articles published by The Bridge Group that many of the inside sales people surveyed are also responding to and qualifying inbound leads so this doesn't mean that 4 hours a day, 20 days a week generates 16 appointments from outbound cold calling.

To me, that's not a million miles off our experience in lead generation and appointment setting for technology vendors.

We figure that one of our team (focused purely on outbound lead generation) can generate a qualified appointment every 1 to 1.5 days for a technology proposition.

Based on The Bridge Group's figures their on quota average is 1.4 per day but, as I said, that will be a mixture of inbound and outbound lead sources. Which means I think we're broadly on the same page.

Also, I liked the metric that that average ramp-up time for an inside sales rep was 4.5 months.

If only we had that long :-)

Labels: appointment setting, inside sales, sales lead generation, telesales

One of the things we always recommend when considering an appointment setting campaign is to run a pilot or proof-of-concept.

This is effectively a time-limited version of the intended campaign which enables us to test the waters.

To fully evaluate the success of a pilot appointment setting campaign it's important that you look at both the number of meetings that are booked as well as the quality of the meetings. To me, until you close that loop you can't effectively evaluate the success of any appointment setting campaign.

We've found that a 3 month period is the best period to make that judgement.

Here's why:

1) The first month of any campaign is about getting traction. For many high-level B2B propositions it's likely that it will take at least two touches to book the appointment. For example, as a minimum most people want something sent over by email and then followed up. All this takes time.

2) By the end of the first month you should start to see appointments being made. I say should because, after all, this is a pilot. Some pitches are just not that easy to nail and it can take us a number of iterations until we get it right. But, for the sake of this point, let's assume that we hit the ground running and book some meetings in Month 1. If they're with a senior decision maker (and, let's face it, who else do you want to see?) then they will certainly be around 3 to 4 weeks away. Which is Month 2, right?

3) So, in Month 2, if all is going to plan, you should have the opportunity to go on a number of sales appointments we've booked. This is your chance to judge the quality of the appointments. Are they with the right person? Are they correctly qualified? Will they progress to a proposal?

4) While you're attending the appointments, guess what, we're still working away to book more meetings for you. So, during Month 2 you should be not only be attending appointments, but you should be see a flow of new meetings. We also use the feedback from your initial appointments to help refine our qualification process.

5) Finally, Month 3 is all about replication of the process. If all is going well, we should be hitting somewhere near the run-rate for the campaign (this helps us determine the scope of any future or ongoing campaigns). If things were a little sticky in Month 1, we should now have a clear view of a working pitch and process. The pipeline of leads should be shaping up and we are usually in a position to predict results of a longer term campaign. Plus, some of the meetings you attended in Month 2 will be showing signs of life (or not) in the form of proposals, demos, 2nd meetings, etc.

For anyone used to B2B sales this process shouldn't come as any surprise.

Opening doors at senior levels isn't easy. It takes persistence and tenacity and, above all, time.

Labels: appointment making, appointment setting

We regularly get asked whether we work on a "pay-per-appointment" or "pay-for-performance" basis for our appointment setting services.

Whilst our answer is always "No", it's worth exploring the subject further to explain our views on this compensation model for the appointment setting business.

Pay-per-appointment sounds like the holy grail for most clients.

It appears (at first glance, anyway) as a zero risk option. With the popularity of Google's pay-per-click and other pay-per-lead online offerings it sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Well, like most things in life, it's not that straight forward.

Here are 4 things to consider if you're looking at pay-per-appointment or pay-for-performance appointment setting:

1) Compensation - it's pretty much universally acknowledge that commission-only sales compensation packages have been discredited. Think of all those mis-selling scandals within the pensions sector. It may still exist in the world of double-glazing and time-shares (do you want your business associated with these people?) but elsewhere business has realised that a balanced compensation plan which includes both a basic and performance element is the best way.

Why? The main reason is that performance-only plans motivate people to only be interested in making a short-term sale and encourages manipulative, aggressive and hard-selling tactics (watch the films "Tin Men" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" for more on this).

In the context of pay-per-appointment setting this translates to a boiler-room approach to closing the meeting at any cost.

After all, no meeting means no money so why should they care if they upset a few people? Think about all those arrogant sales people who've cold-called you in the past, pushing for you to agree to something that you weren't interested in and simply ignoring what you were saying just to close the deal. Do you want those people calling your potential clients and representing your company?

2) Quality - OK, so you've got your appointment, the next thing you need to think about is whether it's any good. I've written previously about this (see my post Just what is a qualified appointment?) but it's worth stating again.

A "qualified" appointment means that the person booking the meeting has to apply their skill and judgement to evaluate the quality of the appointment before agreeing to book it. This involves asking qualifying questions and deciding whether the meeting is worthwhile.

If you want a qualified appointment then your appointment setter needs to actually decide to not book some appointments.

When I talk with prospective clients they all want good quality, qualified appointments with senior decision makers. No-one wants to waste their time, do they? So our clients are trusting us to follow a process which includes qualifying out some opportunities before agreeing to book an appointment. If we follow that process correctly, it inevitably means that we may work hard, pitch a number of decision makers and not book any appointments - because they didn't qualify.

Does that make sense?

People pay us to set up qualified appointments. Our performance can be evaluated in a number of ways, one of which is the number of appointments we book, another is the number of decision makers we pitch and qualify, and a third is linked to activity (such as time worked).

We've not got a problem being rewarded on a results-focused basis (all our fees have a performance-based element) but it needs to fairly reflect what we actually do.

3) Pipeline - another thing about pay-per-appointment or pay-for-performance appointment setting is that it only focuses on short-term results at the exclusion of developing a longer term pipeline of contacts.

As I've blogged about many times before (see Is telemarketing a short or long-term investment?) much of the value in a telemarketing campaign comes from developing relationships over a number of touches. In addition, utilising integrated marketing tactics, such as email marketing, seminars, direct mail, etc all add to the overall ROI.

When you pay-per-appointment you really are only seeing the tip of the iceberg and have no visibility of what's below the water line. Pay-for-performance appointment setting companies will not give you any details about who else they've called, the conversations they've had or even what stage other prospects are. You'll get no feedback on future requirements, competitors, review dates, etc.

Any why should you? You're only interested in the appointment, right?

What this means is that while you're only working with the 1% who have agreed to see you, your competitors are building relationships with the 99% who want more info, have future requirements, and generally are not ready right now.

Do you think an appointment setting company is interested in sending your latest piece of thought-leadership collateral? Are they motivated to nurture those relationships so that you're positioned to be invited on the next RFP?

Of course not! You're not paying them to do that, are you?

4) Risk - finally, the most over-looked element of pay-per-appointment or pay-for-performance appointment setting is an appreciation of risk. Most companies consider the model to be zero-risk. But, the reality is that it only eliminates one risk - the risk of paying and getting no appointments.

As we've covered already, there are other risks associated with pay-per-appointment models that are rarely acknowledged.

There's the risk that the person calling is so motivated to book an appointment (if they don't book an appointment they don't get paid, right?) that they'll be aggressive, use manipulative techniques and generally strong-arm the prospect into booking. Or perhaps they may just come across as desperate, booking the appointment for "just 15 mins" in a way that positions your time as worthless.

Remember, as far as the prospect is concerned it's your company calling them. Is that a risk you want to take?

Another risk we've looked at is the risk of wasting your time. How much does it really cost you to attend a sales appointment? Whether you're a sales person or business owner I guarantee that it's more than the cost of making the appointment.

If you get sent on a wild-goose-chase of an appointment that's been squeezed out by a paid-on-results telemarketer it will cost you. Unqualified appointments cost you in many ways, including the fact that while you're kicking your heels in reception, waiting for someone who's in their office wondering why they agreed to see you, you could be seeing someone who does want to buy.

And, finally, there's the "opportunity risk".

I'm talking here about the risk that you're leaving money on the table, letting your competition build relationships which you have no visibility of, and basically having no control of the marketing process.

This latter point about control needs some explanation.

Pay-per-appointment firms generally use their own data. This is typically a well-worn database of contacts that is shared across multiple campaigns for multiple clients.

Have you asked yourself why most of these pay-for-performance appointment setting firms focus on just one sector? It's so they can re-use the data and contacts they have. And if you're going to re-use the data then working exclusively with one company per sector just doesn't make sense.

Let's leave to one side the fact that they will often be calling on behalf of your competitors at the same time as they're working on your campaign; handling competing clients actually allows these firms to leverage their success (ever wondered why your competitor always seems to have signed into the same companies you meet with?)

Anyway, they also use the same data because they're not going to invest in new data just for you, after all, you're only paying for results. And if they're using the same data, after a while they get to know the "usual suspects" who will always see someone for an appointment. That's their low-hanging-fruit, right?

So they go after them first, get you a quick initial flurry of appointments, everything's looking great.

Then, a few months into the campaign, it starts to dry up a little. The number of meetings coming in slows down. The quality is dropping, further still. And all the while time is ticking, targets are getting closer and you're not getting the traction you need.

Why is this?

The reality is that once you get past the low-hanging-fruit and the lucky-you-called-me-today's, there's a lot of graft needed. Activity needs to continue, diligently calling back, sending info, building those relationships.

For the pay-per-appointment firm this is a diminishing return on their time.

Why should they be investing in building a pipeline they're not acknowledged for? Better to move into the next new client and start harvesting that low-hanging-fruit again.

We've worked with clients who come to us after they've been through this process and have spent months spinning their wheels. They can't get any meaningful data, they've had a handful of good, bad, and ugly appointments and now the pay-per-appointment setting firm isn't returning their calls.

Of course, if you've got no money to invest in marketing then pay-per-appointment might be all you can afford in the short-term. Who knows, you might just get lucky and close one deal quick enough to keep paying for more appointments. In my experience, it seldom works out that way.

Or perhaps you've got a hungry sales team of road warriors and you just want to keep them busy. Pay-for-performance appointment setting could be for you. After all, look at the number of meetings and activity targets they're all hitting.

But, surely there's a better model than that?

Over the years we've found it's better to have a fee model that strikes a fair balance between daily fees that ensure focused activity and a performance element linked to success.

Labels: appointment setting, appointment setting services, b2b telemarketing, pay-per-appointment

Back in 2006 I posted a blog on Ecademy called "The Meetings Game": Some truths about B2B Appointment Setting.

I was talking about many of the appointment setting agencies, mainly operating on a pay-per-appointment basis, who are simply "meeting machines". You know, the kind of boiler room operation that squeezes out a supposedly high-level 15 minute meeting just to hit their targets.

If you've ever been sent half-way across the country to find yourself sitting across the desk from someone who's equally confused why you're there - you know what I mean.

My post struck a chord back then and is just as relevant today.

So, the question to ask is - just what is a "qualified" appointment?

Of course, it means something different for each client.

When we start an appointment setting campaign we invest time understanding exactly what "qualified" means to our clients. To answer that question we really need to understand their sales process.

What's that? Sales process? Surely our job is to book the appointments and let them worry about the rest, isn't it?

The reality is that unless your marketing and sales processes are clearly linked (and the initial sales appointment is pretty much the interface) then you are asking for trouble.

Think of it like this:

There are plenty of acronyms used for qualification; in the sales old-school everyone is taught MAN (Money Authority Need) - "you need to find the MAN".

We prefer to use AIM-T, which stands for Authority, Interest, Money, Timescale (think of Aiming at the Target). We use this because it actually follows the appointment qualification process.

That is, before we call someone we've usually pre-qualified (by targeted data sourcing) the authority level; when we engage with the prospect by phone we start the process of developing and qualifying their interest and, particularly in B2B sales, Money and Timescale can be partly qualified by phone but is usually best qualified as part of the sales process.

On this latter point, whilst it is possible to qualify some aspects surrounding Money, usually by asking questions that uncover whether the prospect is likely to be able to build a business case for your product or service (again this can often be filtered through data-sourcing) we believe that gauging budget and timescales is best kept within the sales process.

So, when is comes to qualified appointments, we need to understand (and sometimes educate our clients) about how they are going to qualify opportunities in the sales process to inform our level of qualification when setting appointments.

Let's look at an example: Say you're selling a high-end B2B product or service, such as a consulting offering or software proposition, with a typical long sales cycle. Whilst, it's true, we will occasionally call a hot prospect who's ready "right now", it's usually the case that they have some lower level of interest.

More often their level of interest will be very early stage and this is one of the great things about telemarketing. At that early stage they are aware of a need but they usually haven't acted on it (which means they haven't called in the competition yet).

The question is, at what point is their interest level high enough for us to set an appointment with them?

If our clients have a solid sales process in place then we may book an appointment with a prospect with the right level of authority and is willing to "take the meeting". Taking a prospect from this mild level of interest to closing a deal takes effort and skill but the rewards are that you're often not competing with other vendors (or at least you have the opportunity to influence a RFP and develop a relationship with the prospect).

Alternatively, if a client has less of a established sales process (or perhaps they are just extremely busy) then we take on the process of further qualifying and nurturing the lead until it's ready to book.

To do this we have to invest in clearly understanding our clients' business and proposition.

It can be a fine line and quite subjective, but that's why our people are so experienced at booking qualified appointments.

Labels: appointment setting, lead qualification