Companies invest a lot of time and resources training sales reps on how to land a sales appointment. However, not everyone provides such training.
The following is an overview of strategies and insights to help your team land more appointments with highly-qualified prospects!
Contact the Right People
You will rarely get an appointment with someone that does not have a genuine need for your solution. Even if you do, you will likely waste a lot of time and effort to no avail. Imagine, for instance, trying to sell a beginner’s self-defense training course to a Black Belt in Karate.
Effective marketing and sales, regardless of the channel, begins with a clear understanding of the person you serve. Create a detailed buyer persona, with all key traits, concerns and lifestyle behaviors identified, before making contact.
Identify the Value and Prepare to Explain
Adding value is the top priority throughout your selling process. Even on a first call, you add value by demonstrating that the time spent on the conversation is not wasted by the prospect.
To add value, you have to know the value. Value is not listing off all the key features and benefits of your solution in the same way to each prospect. Leveraging your personas, contemplate the questions or problems that the prospect faced that led him to your solution. You don’t want to sell on the first call, but you do need an initial, concise value proposition that motivates the prospect to want the sales appointment.
Personalize the Message
Take your value proposition even further by getting familiar with the background of individual buyers. In B2B, for instance, you can research a lot about a company, its owners, history, and critical business issues by reviewing its website, online articles, social media and publicly-reported financial data.
Establishing that you took the time to learn about the prospect before your call shows credibility and genuine interest. It helps the buyer trust your intentions, creating an attitude of improved listening and interest.
Utilize Multiple Channels
Sometimes, the communication channel you want to use to land appointment is not the channel preference for your buyer. Analytics is helpful in pointing to channels that tend to work best with particular customer segments.
Often, the challenge is that buyers may not respond to a single-channel message strategy. You might have to prepare multi-channel campaigns that include a combination of traditional media, email, telemarketing, direct mail, and social media.
Conclusion
These are some of the top strategies and insights to help you improve your efficiency at landing a sales appointment with your most-targeted prospects. Apply these consistently to see greater results.
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