Setting an Appointment in Sales with ANY Customer

Data-Driven Selling By Sales Insights Lab

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KEY MOMENTS
0:59 1. Only set appointments with your ideal prospects.
2:28 2. Create an outreach machine.
3:33 3. Focus on what your prospect actually cares about.
4:52 4. Have a kick-ass call to action.
6:31 5. Make a recommendation.
7:53 6. Be firm.
8:54 7. Have contingencies.

1. Only set appointments with your ideal prospects.

Getting clear about your ideal prospect is so important. At the same time, it’s imperative to be clear about who your ideal prospect is not. Who are the people or organizations that are absolutely not going to be a fit for what you do? Take them off the list ahead of time so you can basically pre-disqualify them before you’re even on the phone. This will save you from wasting time and effort on people who are never going to be a fit. Instead, only focus on setting an appointment with someone who is actually a good fit—your ideal prospect.

2. Create an outreach machine.

Whether it's fully automated or run completely by you, you want to make sure that you create an outreach machine. This will enable you to dial-in the entire process, including all the steps that you take every prospect through to warm up the relationship. So that way, by the time you get them on the phone, they already have an idea of who you are and what kind of value you can offer them.

3. Focus on what your prospect actually cares about.

It's not your prospect’s job to figure out how they can fit your offering into their world. It's your job to figure out how your offering is going to improve their world. That’s on you. So all of your outreach needs to be focused on them.

4. Have a kick-ass call to action.

When we're reaching out to ideal prospects, we need to come in with a call to action that’s kick-ass. There’s no better way to put it. We need something enticing, something that sounds undeniably useful to the prospect. The call to action can’t be getting on a phone call with you. No matter how great you are, nobody wants to talk to a salesperson just for the sake of chatting with them. While your friends and family may be really excited to get on a phone call with you, I can promise you that your prospects are not.

5. Make a recommendation.

The most effective way to set an appointment is to make a recommendation once the conversation has been going well. This recommendation must be made in a strong, firm, confident way. It might sound something like: “Can I make a recommendation?” (The prospect will say, “Sure.”) Then you say: “Ok, great. Why don't we schedule an appointment where we can go more deeply into this conversation, and I can share with you some best practices that we're seeing…Does that make sense?”

6. Be firm.

I’m not telling you to be pushy or aggressive; just firm. This is why a script is so powerful—the more you can script out your process, the more you can stop worrying about what to say next, and just follow your process without resorting to soft, ineffective language because you’re nervous.

So make a firm recommendation and stick to it. There might be some pushback, and that’s fine. The more firm you are, the higher your chances of actually setting an appointment.

7. Have contingencies.

When we’re on the phone with a stranger who doesn't know us, they're almost like a bucking bronco, right? They're just trying to get us to go away. Even if they feel like we could be good for them or for their organization, there's still a natural tendency for prospects to want to just end conversations with salespeople. This is why contingencies are so important when it comes to setting an appointment in sales.