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.
(more…)Currently browsing: Appointment Setting
Latest Updates, Trends and Topics
B2B Appointment Setting: An In-Depth Guide for B2B Sales Success
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:
(more…)
How to Set Sales Appointments using B2B Telemarketing
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…)
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.
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
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 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:
(more…)
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…
(more…)
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…)
Prospect Qualification and Appointment Setting to Land More Meetings
This article was published on December 21st, 2020 in Insurance Journal.
The objective of prospecting is to find quality opportunities to narrow the sales funnel, and then consistently target that focused group with marketing messages to get noticed. For insurance brokers, you have the luxury of finding third party list sources that start you off knowing key data about your prospect universe. Instead of chasing non-qualified prospects — or worse, not even knowing who your prospect universe even is — prospecting followed by properly executed appointment setting leaves no rock unturned.
Every prospect on your list is a new opportunity to qualify, disqualify, set a callback or land a sales meeting for a producer. Phone outreach is the best way to land more sales appointments and the only way to determine if, in fact, the opportunities in your local universe or target industry are sellable. Phone outreach is also one of the only ways to incite two-way communication between a buyer and a seller, which will then lead to more closed deals.
What Is Strategic Prospecting Through Appointment Setting?
Appointment setting, also known as telemarketing, is based on strategically conducting calls in order to schedule introductory sales meetings with decision-makers. For best results, the prospects are pre-qualified through a qualification process, based on specific parameters set by your agency. Typically, to get in the door with workers’ compensation or property/casualty insurance, the qualifier is either total premium, or at least, staff size. Chasing opportunities that equate to less than $1,500 in annual commission is not good use of time or marketing dollars. Instead, reserve those opportunities to close for inbound only… Read more