“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!

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Outsourcing appointment setting

Before Outsourcing B2B Appointment Setting Services, Read This.

Outsourcing B2B appointment setting can be a strategic move for businesses looking to maximize their B2B lead generation, appointment setting, and sales efforts. However, it’s crucial to approach outsourcing with careful consideration and avoid common mistakes that can hinder your success. In this article, we will provide valuable insights and tips to help you navigate the outsourcing process effectively and ensure optimal results. With over 20 years of experience in telemarketing and appointment setting, MarketReach is your trusted partner in running compliant and high-performing campaigns.

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B2B Appointment Setting: An In-Depth Guide for B2B Sales Success

B2B Appointment Setting: An In-Depth 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
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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- 

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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?

How can calling still drive leads? It’s suprisingly a very effective way of marketing. People always have their phones available, so contact has never been easier. You just need to know how to sell to whoever answers your call.

After speaking with several successful, tenured producers at the Professional Insurance Agents’ (PIA) annual conference in Atlantic City, it was interesting to note that many built key blocks of their book of business through outbound calling.  Evidently picking up the phone has got a lot to do with a book of business.

Some will protest this statement, citing, “But it is 2022 now.  There is no way a producer could profitably or reasonably add new clients to their book of business by pounding the phones, is there?” The answer is, yes. Here’s why.

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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…)

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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…)

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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.
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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.
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20 Things We’ve Learned in Sales Prospecting Over 20 Years

It’s hard to sum up 20 years of industry experience in one article, but we are going to try. We are so excited to celebrate 20 years of providing B2B Appointment Setting & Lead Generation services, as well as Integrated Marketing solutions! Over the years, we’ve gained extensive sales knowledge that helps us provide continued value to our clients. After brainstorming as a team, here’s a summary of what we learned, particularly as it relates to the prospecting bucket of the sales process: 

1. Maintain a Clean CRM.

Without a well-designed and well-utilized CRM, there is no way to organize a productive day. If you don’t know who your prospects are, how do you expect to nurture them and build brand recognition with them? If you don’t have a CRM, work on getting one, and use Excel for the time being.

2. Take Great Notes on All Prospect Conversations. 

You may have a great memory, but why would you crowd your brain up with information from hundreds of conversations or rely on it, for that matter? Reflect on the interaction and enter all relevant information they relayed to you. Before your next call or email, revisit your notes to be precise and show you were listening.

3. Quality Prospect Lists Yield Better Results. 

While purchasing a third-party list might be appealing cost-wise and a time-saver, the data will be outdated and require hours of thorough qualification work to update. Be prepared to Invest in a quality list – the growth of your business relies on it. Whether your team organically builds it in-house, purchase a list or have it vetted by a skilled call team like MarketReach, better data yields better results.  (more…)

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