Here are a couple tips for those of you who are utilizing telemarketing to set up your appointments. Whether you or someone else is calling to schedule your appointments, the focus should be on the largest possible number of appointments rather than the quality. Here a few tips to accomplish that goal.
1. Properly define a “Lead.” – I started my sales career in direct telemarketing sales. We followed this motto, “All I need is a name and a number.” I get frustrated with so called sales people who say, “I will go meet with someone as long as he is interested, has a statement ready, and is planning to sign a contract with me.” That isn’t sales. For this industry, your philosophy should be, “All I need is a business owner’s name, an address, and a general time when he or she might be available.” In other words, if your telemarketer gets a secretary or other employee on the phone, train him or her to get the owner’s name and the best time to catch him. That should be all you need.
2. Be flexible in your schedule. – I have told my lead scheduler that if someone wants to meet me now, email me the info; I will change my schedule. I promise you I am just as busy as you are. So if I can do that, you can do that. If my lead scheduler calls and hears, “You know, Bob is hardly ever here, but he is in right now. Where is your guy located?” I am on my way unless I have a pre-scheduled family function, really solid set appointment, or am in the middle of closing another deal. This is why it is important to have your lead scheduler set your appointments for general rather than specific times. I have “morning” and “afternoon” appointments about 80% of the time. That way if we get a really good one or someone asks me to follow up at a specific time, my schedule is still very, very flexible.
3. Don’t pre-judge a lead. Today I stopped at three really promising leads – what you would call “solid” leads. One blew me off; one forgot his statement; and the other one was not there. Then I walked in to a new business cold turkey, closed them on the spot, and am about to key it in to ELAP right now!!!! That is how sales works, so don’t pre-judge a lead. Remember all you need is the name of the owner and the general time when the owner will be available. Your job is to sell them. The only other thing I have my lead scheduler mention is to have a statement handy, but they do not have to agree to this for it to be a lead.
4. Have your lead scheduler go through one small area (two or three small cities or one big one) at a time and really hit that city. Don’t worry so much about quality of leads. I would rather have eight or ten “okay” appointments within ten miles of each other than three “really solid” appointments that are thirty minutes apart. I don’t need an appointment scheduler to sell for me, I just need appointments. I’ll take care of selling them when I get there.
5. Examples: At the bottom of the page I have included a list of leads that my lead scheduler sent me today. Let me ask you, how happy would you be with the quality of these leads? You probably need to lower your expectations and increase the number of leads you get from your appointment scheduler. Notice that out of these eight leads that he generated in probably about two hours, only on one of them (the first one) did he speak with the owner. Most of you would probably only want this first lead and would want your telemarketers to keep following up until they spoke to the owner. There are two big problems with that:
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You will only get maybe another two out of these seven leads, so that means you never even walk into five of them.
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By the time you get the appointment with the other two, they will probably hate you before you walk in the door because you are the salesman whose telemarketer keeps calling every day.This isn’t even mentioning the fact that your telemarketer will have to work five times more hours to get you the same number of leads. I’m excited about all eight of these and will be shocked if I don’t sell at least two or three of them. (The X’s mark out all the specific information so you can just see the notes for each one.)
Example List: XXXXXX, Per Rose Imler, will have statement ready WED at 1:00, ### Mountain Rd, East Freedom, ###-###-#### XXXXXX, Per JEN, Julie Potter there WED PM, will mention to have a statement handy, ### Back St, East Freedom,###-###-#### XXXXXX, Per BRENDA, Colleen Bell, usually there around 12:00, will mention to have a statement handy on THU at 12:00, ### Allegheny St, Hollidaysburg,еК###-###-#### XXXXXX, Per KYLEY, Karen Hettrick there 9-5 but in and out, will mention to have a statement handy WED PM, ### Blair St, Holldaysb, ###-###-#### XXXXXX, Per CHARLY, (a she), Don and Jame Beerboweer, (bro&sis), usually there & will mention to have statement handy THU PM, ### Allegheny St. Hollidaysb, ###-###-#### XXXXXX, Per CANDI, JEFF BENSON, in and out best to cl first, just got a quote, #### RT 764 HLDSBRG, ###-###-#### XXXXXX, Per RICHARD, Tina and Jenny usually there 7:30-2:00, will mention to have statement handy WED AM, ### Allegheny St. HLDSBRG, ###-###-#### XXXXXX, Per CINDY, Jeff Arthur will be there THU PM, she will mention to have statement handy, 115 Canal St., HLDSBRG,еК###-###-####
Email me with any questions: james@ccsalespro.com
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Organizing Your Sales Leads into a Schedule
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