Top B2B Appointment Setting Tips & Tricks – Backed By Industry Experts

B2B appointment setting aims to schedule sales meetings for a closing sales rep to deliver a more detailed sales pitch via cold calling and following up with leads at the top of the funnel.

When dealing with a higher sale price, appointment setting is particularly effective in delegating prospecting duties, so that closing sales reps can focus their attention on qualified leads. A larger sale price also takes longer to nurture and close, so appointment setting is particularly effective in those scenarios.

In order to avoid the costs and effort of hiring this role internally, many companies outsource the appointment setting agencies.

According to Medium, 75% of executives are willing to make an appointment or attend an event based solely on a cold email or a cold call.

Cold emailing is 40 times more effective at getting new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined.

On average, it takes 90 days between the first dial and the first appointment for IT companies.

In this article, we’ve got together 8 Top Marketing Experts from across the globe who share their views and insights on “Top B2B Appointment Setting tips and tricks”.

Want to lock down that appointment? Know your audience, first and foremost. The same tricks apply—take the time to study the company’s ideal customer profile and buyer persona to really pinpoint the customers you want to target.

After detailed research on the industry, look up info on the prospect you’re talking to. Go beyond researching their title—what does that title really mean? Look them up on LinkedIn. Different titles can take on entirely different meanings depending on the industry. There’s a whole new buying group out there who can play gatekeeper or open the doors to a world of sales opportunities.

The real trick is to look for the “decision influencers” in the company who really understand what you’re talking about—the people who would actually use your product and have increasingly more power to move your conversations forward to decision-makers and set those appointments.

With confidence, you’ll know who you’re talking to and the value of your product, with the ability to engage more qualified prospects. Your energies will be well-invested in sales strategies that will ultimately help you set more appointments at those ideal companies.

Kim Purcell is editorial manager at CIENCE. Her extensive background includes writing and editing for publishing, IT, and digital media industries, with a special focus on B2B content marketing strategies, multimedia content, design, and product development. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

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B2B Appointment Setting is the traditional way of connecting to business stakeholders and finding Sales Prospects.

Many businesses fail because they just hire a few telesales teams and have them make 100 calls a day and after a few weeks they realize it’s not working out.

Rather I believe in scientific approach as below:

I think below are very important points for making B2B Appointment Successful:

1. Right Audiences: What you are selling is equally important to whom you are selling. Hence ensure Audiences you are targeting are a perfect fit for your products or services.

2. Money / Authority / Need: Once Audience is chosen, i.e. CIOs or IT Directors are the right audience for you, then you need to identify if they have Money, Authority & Need.

Many times B2B Appointment Campaigns fail because the meeting is done with the right audiences but they are not eligible in this criteria. They should have it all. If they have Money [Budget] but not authority and need, it will fail. And the other way around.

3. Connect Correctly: Once point 1 and 2 are clear, that’s when actual work starts when you actually start making calls and speak to the right audiences who have money, authority & need.

Present your product to the point and how it will benefit their business. You will know their answer in the first 30 seconds.

4. Connect Regularly: Once you are connected with Prospects, be regular at follow ups and connect them regularly. Best way is to ask them what’s the best time to call them back for the next follow up.

Point 1 and 2 are predominantly on Data Gathering and assessing the prospects. Points 3 and 4 are for approaching correctly. Once above execution is done correctly that’s when successful B2B Appointment is Set.

Connect with Jai Mulani on LinkedIn.

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Always do your research before reaching out to new prospects. Building an airtight ICP, understanding your personas well, and incorporating personalization that goes far beyond just name and company are key to achieving high conversions with B2B outreach. LinkedIn sales navigator makes it really easy to learn about prospects and to quickly identify who the key decision makers with the account maps feature.

Chris Mitchell is the Founder & CEO at Intelus Agency, an award winning LinkedIn marketing agency, helping executives, and sales professionals generate revenue from LinkedIn with B2B content marketing and outreach. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Warm up your prospect with interesting, valuable content. A great strategy for getting prospects ready for your appointment is to drip some relevant content to them ahead of time. This could be a case study, whitepaper, or even an interesting anecdote or story that is highly relevant to their company or industry. This reminds them of your expertise, gets them thinking ahead of the call, and immediately gives you a personal ice breaker: “Did you get that story I sent you? What’d you think?” If you really want to ‘wow’ them, include some personal research about them or their company in your advance email. Congratulate them on recent positive press their company has received or connect with them about where they went to school or where they live and work. Adding some humor and personality can also really help you to build rapport right away and start developing a great relationship.

Mike Jones is an award-winning branding agency owner, author, speaker, and strategist, helping B2B companies make their brands remarkable with authentic identity and messaging. When he’s not doing all that jazz he’s building LEGO with his kids, reading a history book, or drinking a good cup of coffee…sometimes all three at the same time. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Sell the problem people have, talk about the things they use the most, in the order they use those things, have a strong CTA.

Lloyd is the past president of the Senior Insurance Marketing Association, a frequent contributor to industry magazines like Retirement Advisor, ThinkAdvisor and InsuranceNewsNet. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

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According to our Top Performance in Sales Prospecting research, it takes an average of 8 touches to get an initial meeting with a new prospect. For appointment-setting success, you must reach out a number of times, using multiple media. Prospects are busy and bombarded with marketing and sales messages. You can break through the noise, but it’s unlikely you will do so on your first try. Leave voicemails, send emails, drop a package in the mail, write a hand-written note, or mark up an article to send.

Dave Shaby is COO of RAIN Group and coauthor of the Amazon Bestseller “Virtual Selling” You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Make connections and get to know and like people first; then help them and sales come naturally as a result. This is my approach for my clients with the cold calling and LinkedIn appointments setting we do for them. We give you a full calendar and then you take that approach and you win!

Barry Coziahr, has consulted and trained more than 10,000 small business owners as well as delivered over 1,000 seminars and workshops to small businesses across the United States. Both his hands-on work and presentations demonstrate proven marketing tactics using real-world examples and case studies to help small businesses, authors and nonprofits market themselves successfully. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Appointment setting is never an easy task. There are times people will not attend the meetings even how good your pitch is. Two things to prioritize when doing the work is to know your buyer persona carefully. It doesn’t make sense to reach out to people who won’t benefit from the product you’re selling, second is, build relationships which is our core value at Rippedboxstation. People will trust you if you do your outreach in a personal manner. Good brands sell you a product; legendary brands sell you an emotion and that produces high paying clients.

Krislyn Gundaya-Zamoranos is a client acquisition specialist who specializes in end to end process of acquiring new clients. Her decade of experience allowed her to build a Virtual Assistant Managed Agency on her own. She is the Chief Executive Officer of Rippedboxstation and Co-Founder of Graphicsmnl both based in Manila, Philippines. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

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