Don't Make Sales Reps Schedule Appointments

By, Brian Grinonneau

Having sales pros cold call and prospect is like having a star baseball player stock the concession stand. It’s a lousy use of talent and terrible waste of money. Sales stars shine when selling. Let them sell!

A sales super achiever wants to meet with prospects, determine a fit, suggest solutions and close the deal. It feeds his competitive nature. It assuages the hunger to perform.

A sales super achiever hates making endless calls to find the right prospect with whom to meet. The process dampens the spirit and kills motivation.

Those who think a salesman should be a prospector and sales genius can stop here. The paradigm shifted a few turns back.

In today’s sales world, an account rep must exploit strength--not work on weakness. Forget about a well-rounded rep, focus on a super star that closes the deal and brings home fists full of cash.

Appointment setting, telemarketing companies will set any sales staff on a course for success. Highly qualified sales appointments are scheduled with those who have an interest in your solution and have the ability to buy from you; appointments that are the result painstaking prospecting and hours of dialing.

A December 2007 MaSM study found that appointment setting firms can double the productivity of a sales staff because it can concentrate only on selling and not the mundane associated tasks. When qualified sales appointments are scheduled, closing ratios climb and cash flow improves.

Don’t make sales reps schedule their own sales appointments. They hate doing it and aren’t very good at it. Leave the job to professionals who love doing it and are good at it. Sales stars shine when selling. Let them sell!

90% of Some Marketing Budgets Spent on Appointment Setting

By Sally Johnson

It’s important enough to focus on and I can’t stress it enough… Telemarketing is used to set appointments because it works!

Some businesses are so aware of how effective this is that they spend as much as 90% of their marketing budgets to have telemarketers set appointments for their salespeople. Getting their sales reps in front of the right decision maker increases the liklihood of a sale, and businesses know it!

That’s because the sales person is able to have an uninterrupted and exclusive time with the prospect. This undivided attention gives a good sales person the chance to present the features and benefits of the product, answer objections and close the sale. It’s much harder for the prospect to say “no” when they are face-to-face with the presenter.

In fact, it increases the sales rate dramatically and businesses know this. Cold calling is a drudgery compared to having a standing appointment already set for an in-person meeting with the decision maker. Telemarketing is used to set appointments and businesses have found it to be worth the expense.

Sally Johnson has been in the telemarketing business for over 20 years and now enjoys written and researching new industy trends.

Outsourcing some sales efforts can boost the bottom line

Hotel & Motel Management, by Howard Feiertag
Lots of outsourcing is going on these days in all areas of hotel operations, so why not take a look at what could be helpful in this area with regard to sales?

We all can offer suggestions on how salespeople can be more productive with their time. After all, the most important role of a salesperson is to make more sales, and that relates to bringing in more business, not making more sales calls.

But at many properties, we see job descriptions referring to the number of sales calls that need to be made. If it's not reflected in a job description, we know about managers telling salespeople to go out and make more calls. However, it is not the number of calls we make that creates profit for a business, but the dollar amount of business actually being collected.

In order to bring in more profitable business, we first need to know who to call. This is where we get to the term "prospecting," which means finding out who is in a position to provide business to a property. The most successful salespeople are those who concentrate only on calling qualified prospects. Sales personnel would be more productive if they spent their time making contact and building relationships with those who have been qualified to book business with them.

All too often, salespeople spend a good amount of time making "cold calls." This term refers to calls being made on just about anyone to determine if that contact could be considered a prospect. The cold calls are made to "qualify" if that contact would have any business for a property. These calls are made by phone or in person.

We need to consider if the amount of time spent by a salesperson making cold calls to find qualified prospects is as productive as that person spending the time making calls on only those already qualified. Most sales personnel already know the answer to that question. So, the next question is, if they do not do the cold calling to find qualified prospects, how will that get done so that the salesperson has only prospects to call?

This is where outsourcing comes into play. Companies that will do cold calling for a property--often at a much lower cost than having a salesperson do it--are becoming more prevalent.
In addition to prospecting (lead generation), some companies provide a variety of sales activity functions, such as database cleansing, sales missions, trade-show follow-up services, direct mail follow-up programs, customer satisfaction surveys, customer opinion polls, internal employee surveys and mystery shopping.

Howard Feiertag is on the faculty of the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va. He can be reached at howardf@vt.edu.