Most sales managers are trying to sell a product to a potential customer from the very first call. If such an action option can still show effectiveness in the B2C segment, then it is not necessary to count on success in the B2B segment with this approach. How not to lose leads and profits? It is correct to make an appointment with the client by phone. How should this be done?
Of course, you can use lead generation services (like Belkin’s) that will save sellers a huge amount of time so that they deal only with “hot” customers. Top appointment setting companies do not compete with sellers but help them work by increasing their conversion rate. Sellers usually spend up to 50% of their working time proceeding with b2b lead generation, but b2b marketing can do the prospecting, and sellers will hold meetings with new business leads and sell.
The task of the service is to understand what is a customer database, to find a potential client and arrange a meeting, as well as to put the business leads in the hottest state. And as practice shows, most customers usually “close” at least one transaction out of three or four meetings offered by such services.
However, let’s find out what to do in case you have decided to do it on your own.
You have passed the secretary and you are connected to the decision-maker. Your goal is to make an appointment. It will not be possible to make an appointment from the first minute. The first task is to involve the interlocutor in yourself, in your expertise, and attract his attention. It is strongly recommended to think in advance of the template of your future talk, and it will be great to have sales funnel templates as well.
How well you spend the first 3 minutes of the conversation depends on your success not only in making an appointment but also on the entire further sale of the transaction cycle.
At the beginning of the conversation, use 3 techniques:
- Introduce yourself according to the algorithm of 5 In the first 5 seconds, say that you will take no more than 5 minutes of time.
- Sound dry and Turn on your emotional intelligence and empathy: listen to the state of the interlocutor on the other end of the wire. Most often, he is completely immersed in his own affairs and is in a terrible hurry. And so that he does not hang up, the first thing he needs to understand is that you will not take much time and will not create problems for him. He does not count on the fact that you can be useful at all.
- Clarify the powers of the decision-maker. Your goal is to start negotiations and make an appointment with a person who is really authorized to consider your proposals.
How to make an appointment
1. Attention
Make sure that you recommend the logical continuation of the first contact: the client is involved in the conversation and keeps in touch with you for more than 5 minutes.
2. Time
Apply the same technique as at the beginning of the first call. Inform us that the appointment setting will take no more than 15-30 minutes. Be sure to specify what minimum time the client is ready to provide you for the first meeting presentation.
3. Content
Let us know that at the meeting the client will receive some useful and free content.
4. Gathering a decision-making group
Today in B2B, as a rule, more than one employee makes decisions. Offer to assemble a decision-making group. Invite a technical specialist, an employee who will directly use your product, to a meeting.
5. Concern
At the first meeting, the manager usually strives to make a sale. This is categorically wrong.
6. Commitment
In B2B sales, it is necessary to plan the following commitment. It will move you and the client through the sales and purchase cycles. This will be your main victory and progress in the sale. Specify the time, place and who will be present at the negotiations besides you, and commit to confirming the date of the meeting a day in advance.
Negotiations methods
1. Focus on the customer’s problems
Today, ever-busy decision-makers are not interested in hearing about your products-service-solutions. They are concerned only with their own problems. Show in the first communication with the decision-maker that you understand the key problems with which he is concerned on a daily basis. Every first decision-maker solves operational problems of various quality and properties, and worries about his business or his position in the Company in which he works. Concentrate your attention on solving the problems of the decision-maker.
2. Be proud of the results
Mention those of your customers who have achieved results thanks to your product-service solution. Tell me what and how they did before starting a business relationship with you, and what results they achieved after starting working with you. For example: “We recently worked with Universal Systems. Their representatives could not reach the decision-maker, all they sought was the secretary’s consent to receive a commercial offer from them, no more. After working with us, 87% of sellers make appointments just 1 week after the first contact.”
3. Engage in conversation
Plan all your questions ahead of time. You will never come up with them during a conversation on the phone or a meeting. Make them provocative. Such that the decision-maker thinks and begins to analyze the situation. “How big a problem is improving sales for you? What actions are you taking today in this area? How confident are you that they will lead you to the result you would like to reach?”
As we can see, it is not so difficult to persuade a client to a meeting, especially if you remember that this is the purpose of the call. It is necessary to know the target customers and their pain, study the techniques of overcoming objections and prescribe a small script in advance.
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