9 Signs To Consider Outsourcing Your B2B Appointment Setting

Written by Matthew Ludden / April 26, 2018 / 4 Minute Read
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The ultimate goal of sales teams is attracting and closing qualified leads. Sales and marketing automation are pivotal in lead generation and nurturing. B2B appointment-setting services enhance your sales pipeline’s flow, allowing reps to focus on qualified appointments. Outsourced appointment setting can transform the sales process, especially for growing businesses.

Outbound Lead Generation

The ultimate goal of all sales teams is attracting, engaging, and closing qualified leads. Two major factors within marketing your business are generating leads and converting prospects via your in-house sales team.

Sales and marketing automation have become essential to the lead generation process as well as prospecting and lead nurturing. For most sales representatives, early-on sales processes including cold calling, lead qualification, and appointment setting can distract from sales meetings and closing deals.

The cold reality is: Without lead generation, your sales reps cannot close deals.

B2B appointment-setting services are essential tools for increasing the flow of your sales pipeline and maximizing the efficiency of your sales reps.

When your sales representative can focus on qualified appointments and key decision-makers, you close more deals and build successful partnerships with your existing clients.

For many businesses including start-ups, niche industries, and SMBS experiencing business growth, outsourced appointment setting radically transforms that sales development process. Professional appointment-setting services focus on the lead generation funnel including cold calling, prospecting, lead nurturing, and scheduling meetings for your in-house team.

Let’s explore when to outsource your outreach efforts for better B2B appointment setting.

What is B2B Appointment Setting?

Setting an appointment is one of the initial steps in your sales process.

In fact, there are two sales involved in every transaction: the value proposition and the close.

In order for sales reps to close a deal, you must first successfully secure the appointment with your potential lead. There are two advocates who execute lead generation services: the sales development representative (SDR) who actively pursues all inbound leads and the business development representative (BDR) who actively pursues all outbound lead generation.

Both of these roles can be performed by in-house teams. However, these roles often are filled by members of your sales team. This can lead to a number of issues within the sales pipeline and less than successful appointment setting processes.

The main issue that businesses face when sales reps act as appointment setters is not understanding that lead generation and lead nurturing. Early sale process steps are distinct from closing techniques. While a sales representative is highly skilled at closing the deal and building long-term partners, pursuing key decision makers is far different.

Instead of wasting talented closing representatives on B2B appointment-setting services, you should consider outsourcing to an appointment-setting company. This gives your access to the latest technology and the resources of skilled appointment setters.

While it may sound straightforward, the truth is that setting appointments can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of making a sale and marketing your business.

Consider that, on average, it requires eight contacts per lead to close a sale, yet many sales representatives reach out to leads only twice. This is not due to a lack of ambition or drive to succeed.

Imagine the amount of time and energy required to contact a single prospect eight times. When you outsource B2B appointment-setting services to Valve+Meter, our specialists design cutting-edge processes and bleeding-edge automation tools to pursue leads at all stages of the sales funnel.

Good companies develop strong teams and implement training to succeed within all facets of the sales process.

Great companies identify weaknesses and execute processes to reach your full potential.

If there are issues within your business, Valve+Meter can help identify these threats and provide tools to strengthen your sales.

Nine Reasons to Consider B2B Appointment Setting Services

As a leading appointment-setting company, Valve+Meter executes our B2B Lead Generation Audit for many businesses and organizations. There are several common issues that lead to fractures in the sales pipeline. You can diagnose several of these issues within the lead generation process.

Your Customer Data is Messy or Inaccurate

A striking number of CRM platforms are filled with messy, inaccurate, outdated, and otherwise poorly managed data.

One of the first signs your sales teams need help with the lead generation process. Appointment-setting services create a strategy for monthly, quarterly, and semi-annual maintenance.

If your in-house sales teams are not familiar with cold calling best practices and separating qualified leads from poor prospects, then cutting-edge technology can help.

Outsourcing appointment setting through a performance marketing firm verifies all data and increases lead generation. Individual sales people sifting through your data is time consuming and wastes their talent.

By outsourcing your appointment setting, you can address this issue effectively. Building an ongoing partnership increases lead generation by leveraging clean and reliable customer data. With a streamlined and accurate CRM database, you can enhance your B2B appointment setting efforts and improve the overall efficiency of your sales process.

Lack Of Lead Nurturing Process

Potential customers exist throughout the sales funnel.

Wasting effort on cold calling leads to missed opportunities for your closing representatives.

Likewise, neglecting top-of-the-funnel leads allows more agile competitors an opportunity to attract those prospects.

If you lack a lead nurturing process that delivers effective outreach and follow-up to every lead, then you are missing opportunities.

A nurturing system continuously updates and tracks purchasing signals. As a prospect moves through the funnel, appointment-setting services transfer to your sales team just the right time.

Understanding the quality of leads and their respective stages prevents potential clients from being lost. Like a customer success manager who cares for relationships with existing clients, an appointment-setting team uses sales and marketing automation to nurture leads from the top of the sales funnel.

Missed Revenue Goals

An appointment-setting company will not solve every issue within your sales process. However, when you experience missed revenue goals, there are likely fractures within your pipeline.

Common factors include sales representatives focused on the wrong leads or other inefficiencies. In highly competitive markets, your best sales representatives should focus on building rapport and developing relationships with key decision makers.

For many SMBs, an efficient lead generation process can free your talent to focus on every sales opportunity.

Outsourcing appointment-setting services can provide valuable insights and help you understand why your revenue goals are not being met. By leveraging the metrics and expertise involved in outsourcing marketing performance, you can enhance your understanding of revenue drivers and optimize your strategies for better results.

Outsourced appointment setting brings several benefits that can contribute to revenue growth. One of the greatest advantages of a professional appointment setter is an insight into gaps and areas for improvement. Because appointment setters’ sole focus is sales development, they can improve processes throughout your process.

Combined with B2B appointment-setting technology, this knowledge empowers you to make data-driven decisions and optimize your marketing efforts to maximize revenue potential.

Exhausted Sales and Marketing Teams

If your sales representatives are too busy to execute cold calls and properly respond to inbound leads, then you have a major issue within your process.

This frequently happens with SMBs, start-ups, and seasonal businesses. Instead of hiring more sales development staff, outsourcing your lead generation can transform business growth.

An B2B appointment setting company acts as an extension of your sales and marketing team. You own all leads, all strategies, and all of the long-term benefits.

Freeing your staff from B2B appointment settings reduces frustration and improves performance.

Pipeline Is Slow

A slow trickle from your sales pipeline frustrates any business especially when you have the sales and operational capabilities to grow.

It may not be due to a sales representative under production. Instead, leaks throughout your processes lead to too few leads or poorly qualified leads.

Outsourcing B2B appointment setting identifies issues within your process and builds the structures to nurture leads and set appointments faster and more frequently.

These structures include response time, prospecting, networking, cold calling, and other outbound lead generation techniques.

Who are you calling? Why are you calling? Why should they listen? If you hesitate on any of these questions, outsourcing this type of work may be beneficial to your organization’s success when setting sales appointments.

How do you get there? Campaign development is a very large part in achieving the desired outcome. Companies must be able to handle script writing, handle objections from prospects and be willing to earn the right to ask for the appointment.

Knowing how to train your team, test strategies and implement new processes can be taxing and overwhelming on any company struggling with appointment setting for a sales team.

An outsourced team like Valve+Meter will step in to assist in areas where improvement can be made as well as identifying where email marketing through workflow development can help increase appointment setting.

You Have Too Many Leads

Just like an exhausted sales and marketing team, you may find your internal sales development representative is overwhelmed.

Adding an appointment-setting team is extremely expensive and difficult.

Finding representatives with the experience and skills to perform successful appointment setting is the first obstacle.

The second challenge for business growth is continuous training and investing in the latest technology.

Outsourcing all or part of your lead gen to B2B appointment setters relieves strain on your SDRs. This can be helpful during a product launch, seasonal surges, and in the case of growing companies.

By outsourcing appointment setting, you secure a dedicated team of skilled and knowledgeable marketers who work closely with your sales team. This collaboration results in acquiring new clients, boosting revenue, and fostering business growth with every scheduled appointment.

Lack of Marketing Resources

If your leads are left wondering when your company will follow up, then you should consider outsourcing.

B2B businesses face unique challenges. Too often, you must rely on B2C marketing strategies to drive any leads and contact inbound inquiries.

Appointment-setting companies deliver a nearly immediate boost to your resources. Outsourced appointment setting is an efficient way to save business resources — no searching, interviewing, hiring, or training is required to implement campaigns.

B2B appointment setting is a significant challenge but with the expertise of companies like Valve+Meter, you reduce time and capital expense while enjoying genuine B2B marketing efforts.

Valve+Meter designs a B2B appointment-setting strategy specifically for your business.

Lack of Measurable Metrics and Performance Data

Understanding your customers leads to closing deals more successfully and building stronger relationships.

If you don’t know your customers then you cannot find your next opportunity.

Appointment-setting companies like Valve+Meter use the most advanced advertising technology available to build strategies, execute campaigns, track performance, and build analytics.

Instead of relying on intuition and prior experience, outsourcing B2B appointment-setting services inserts measurable metrics and tracking into your process.

Appointment setters can provide more accurate strategies for finding new leads, nurturing with branded materials, and empowering every sales representative to achieve greater success.

You Need to Start Appointments Up and Slow Them Down

For seasonal businesses and companies launching new products, the ability to turn your sales appointments up and down is valuable.

When your business operates at capacity, outsourcing appointment-setting services can nurture leads. Controlling the flow of leads to your sales team can prevent issues within operations but not waste qualified appointments.

Just as too many leads are a liability when you are at capacity, hiring personnel for a season or a product launch is expensive and wastes internal resources.

An outsourced appointment-setting team provides exactly what you need at the exact cost required. You never waste revenue on unneeded payroll or miss out on opportunities because you don’t have the internal staff to manage inquiries.

Know When to Outsource Appointment Setting

There are many frequent challenges with B2B sales and marketing. Outsourcing B2B appointment-setting services can be a game-changer both as a long-term marketing strategy and a short-term stop gap.

Great businesses strive to address challenges and optimize your sales process. By partnering with professional appointment-setting companies like Valve+Meter, you gain access to a team of trained experts who can effectively generate leads, nurture prospects, and set appointments with key decision-makers.

Outsourcing appointment setting helps overcome issues such as messy or inaccurate customer data, lack of lead nurturing processes, missed revenue goals, exhausted sales and marketing teams, slow pipeline, lack of marketing resources, lack of measurable metrics and performance data, and the need to scale appointments up and down. These challenges, when left unaddressed, can hinder your sales growth and impact your revenue potential.

Valve+Meter’s combination of experience, resources, and cutting-edge technology provides a powerful resource for your sales team. Heal the fractures in your sales pipeline and take control of the flow of leads into your business.

 

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