What’s a Book of Business Got to do with Picking Up the Phone?

What’s a Book of Business Got to do with Picking Up the Phone?

The idea of picking up the phone to drive leads may feel outdated in today’s digital-first world. But outbound calling remains a powerful strategy for building and growing a strong book of business—especially in competitive industries like insurance and B2B services.

At MarketReach, we’ve helped clients revitalize their pipelines with effective calling campaigns. Here’s why outbound calling works in 2025 and how you can use it to create meaningful connections that grow your revenue.

Key Takeaways

  • Outbound calling helps you build trust and rapport faster than passive digital tactics alone.
  • Success depends on strategic targeting, clear value propositions, and persistence.
  • In 2025, combining calls with LinkedIn, email, and AI tools creates a multi-channel powerhouse.
  • Agents who dedicate consistent time to outbound calling see stronger client acquisition and retention.
(more…)
Appointment Setting – Today’s Leading Sales Strategy

Appointment Setting: What It Is + How to Drive Sales Using It

B2B sales cycles are long, complex, and increasingly competitive. You can have the best product in your space—but if your sales team isn’t consistently speaking with qualified decision-makers, your pipeline suffers. That’s where appointment setting becomes a game-changer.

Whether done in-house or outsourced, appointment setting bridges the gap between lead generation and sales conversion. When executed correctly, it empowers your team to focus on closing deals instead of chasing unvetted prospects.

 

Key Takeaways

Outsourcing overflow customer service calls will:

  • Appointment setting is the process of booking qualified sales meetings between your reps and potential buyers
  • It involves pre-qualifying leads, nurturing interest, and securing time on the calendar with decision-makers.
  • The practice improves sales team efficiency, shortens deal cycles, and increases ROI on marketing efforts.
  • In 2025, successful companies are blending human outreach, automation tools, and personalized follow-up to scale appointment setting effectively.
  • Outsourced appointment setting solutions offer an immediate way to generate qualified pipeline without hiring additional staff.

(more…)
Outsourcing appointment setting

B2B Appointment Setting Tips: Avoiding Common Mistakes

B2B appointment setting is a crucial part of many companies’ lead generation strategy. But without the right approach, it can become a time-wasting, low-ROI endeavor. Whether you’re conducting cold outreach or following up with inbound leads, avoiding these common appointment setting mistakes can drastically improve your chances of success.

At MarketReach, we help businesses improve appointment setting by applying proven frameworks and eliminating the costly mistakes that block results. Whether you’re building an in-house outbound team or considering professional appointment setting services, mastering these fundamentals will give you a major advantage.

Key Takeaways:

  • Poor targeting, generic messaging, and vague meeting goals are top causes of failed appointment setting.
  • Successful campaigns focus on highly defined buyer personas, personalized outreach, and qualification before booking.
  • Multichannel follow-up sequences, decision-maker qualification, and strong handoffs are critical to maximize ROI.
  • Tracking appointment quality metrics—not just volume—is key to improving pipeline health.
  • Practical tactics like SPIN questions, multi-threading contacts, no-show recovery, and automated scheduling dramatically improve conversion rates.

(more…)
“Call Me After the Holidays”

“Call Me After the Holidays”

As the cold weather approaches, so does the infamous objection that anyone making prospecting calls dreads to hear: “Call me after the Holidays”.

With Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years and other holidays on the horizon, the excuse that prospects won’t have time to talk until after the New Year is going to pop up often. Many prospects will get lost in the thought of good food and spending time with friends and family. While your mind may drift off into similar thoughts of your own, you can use this time to increase your sales pipeline into the New Year!

(more…)
B2B Appointment Setting: An In-Depth Guide for B2B Sales Success

B2B Appointment Setting: Complete Guide for B2B Sales Success

B2B appointment setting is a vital tactic for seeing growth in your business. In 2022, there were more than 33.2 million business owners in the US. And each year, thousands of more businesses are born. However, to succeed as a business owner, you need to get the word out, set up sales meetings, and close deals.  You either need to get good at sales yourself, or hire a competent salesperson with business to business (B2B) sales skills necessary!

This is where your appointment setting skills come into play. Businesses like MarketReach have expert appointment setters who can help you build your business – but if you’re going to try to do this yourself, there’s a few things you’ll need to know:

Key Takeaways

  • B2B appointment setting is the process of contacting and qualifying potential customers for a B2B sales meeting
  • B2B businesses are more likely to need appointment setting services than B2C businesses.
  • Good appointment setting focuses on the right audience, uses targeted messaging, and has a strong call to action
(more…)
A woman making sales appointments.

How to Set Sales Appointments using B2B Telemarketing

Key Takeaways:

  • Find a telemarketing agency with a proven track record. Avoid off-shore telemarketing agencies.
  • Focus on lead gen, make sure to implement a lead qualification process so you don’t waste time on low-quality leads.
  • Don’t be pushy when calling your pre-qualified leads.
  • After you close a sale, deliver exceptional service. This leads to word-of-mouth referrals which makes more inbound leads for your business.

When you run a B2B business, your telemarketing can (and should) look different from other run-of-the-mill telemarketing operations. 

You need every call to drive a deeper relationship with your prospects. You need your leads to not just agree to set a sales appointment – but you need them to WANT to set up a sales appointment. 

Sales appointment setting through telemarketing can be a daunting task, so we’ve compiled a how-to guide to help you get started! 

Let’s dive in- 

(more…)
sales tips for insurance 2024 header

Sales Tips for Insurance in 2024

After a long and arduous year, 2024 brings a fresh start. Now is the perfect opportunity to revamp your company’s commercial sales and marketing plan. This article will show you how any agency can improve its sales in the upcoming year, despite the challenges that may come along the way. Consider these insurance sales tips for 2024:

 Prospect List and Qualification 

Get started by evaluating your company’s prospect list. Identify your most qualified business opportunities. Take some time to reconstruct your target market and focus your attention on them – particularly, your Top 100. The pandemic has caused many businesses to change the way they do business, while others had to close down all together. Many producers focus on certain industry segments such as construction, restaurants and manufacturing, all whose ‘face’ has changed quite a bit this past year. It’s important to requalify your list to be sure you have the most practical targets during this time.   (more…)

The Prospect List

The Prospect List

Even the idea of creating a solid prospect list can be daunting. Your prospecting activity in your list reflects your entire sales pipeline. The more activity against your target market (e.g., phone outreach, email, LinkedIn or direct mail), the better the likelihood of building trust and sales activity that leads to closed deals and more referrals.

To create a steady pipeline, you must rely on the paramount foundation of sales activity, which is best kept as a running log of emails, phone calls and other marketing techniques to get attention, and then acquire sales. Here are some small steps to make the process less overwhelming.

Identify Your Sales Targets

To identify your sales targets properly, start by mapping out your core niche industries and geographic radius. Commission opportunities based on staff size and industry will dictate how best to spend your marketing dollars. If you’re going after property/casualty insurance or workers’ compensation—those groups in which staff size is more important than class of business—determine the staff size minimums that still can justify a marketing-spend in targeting them. (more…)

What To Do When Prospects Ghost You

What To Do When Prospects Ghosts You

Have you ever made it far along in the sales cycle with a prospect and then, just when you are about to close the deal, all communication stops? When a prospect ghosts you, it can be frustrating, leaving you wondering what you did wrong and what you could’ve done differently. However, just because communication has stopped doesn’t mean that you won’t ever hear from them again – there can be many reasons for the “ghosting,” and if you had a good feeling about an ultimate sale, the ghosting could simply be due to bad timing. Consider these suggestions for what to do when a prospect ghosts you:

Key Takeaways

When a prospect ghosts you, you should:

  • Follow up. Avoid being overbearing when following up, being too pushy will drive them away.
  • Send more personalized messages with very specific questions.
  • Remind the prospect of their desired outcomes, then remind them how you’ll help them achieve their desired outcomes.
  • If nothing else works, keep them in your database to revisit another time.
(more…)
The Importance of Good Time Management in Sales

The Importance of Good Time Management in Sales

Time management is an important skill that all salespeople should learn how to master and key performance indicators are a great way to measure how well your salespeople manage their time. The most important KPI that you might use to measure performance is the number of sales each salesperson makes in a week or month. While this can certainly be helpful in determining how “good” your salespeople are at selling, it is also important to consider the quality of each of these sales along with the interactions that come before it. Sometimes it is better to make fewer substantial sales than many small ones that are underqualified or require. With the help of good time management skills, your salespeople can… 

Key Takeaways

  • Don’t waste time on unqualified leads. Make sure your lead qualification system is robust and accurate.
  • Talk to the right people at the right time. Understand where a buyer is in their sales cycle before beginning a conversation. Don’t waste time on interactions with buyers who are in the wrong stage of the sales cycle.
  • Work from your high-priority leads down. Give your most important leads the most of your time.
(more…)