In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. It was commercially made available in 1878 after George McCoy conceptualised the first telephone exchange or network. At first, telephones were limited for use among businesses. Railroads and telecommunications are the very first companies that used it. They were followed by government offices. As the demand grew for telephony, the telephone switchboard was invented in 1891. Business leaders and government agencies started hiring telephone operators.
In the 1970s, call centres became popular after the development of an automatic call distributor by Rockwell Galaxy. He developed such a service for airlines to schedule and track flight appointments. Business leaders also started using appointment setting services to schedule meetings among firms. Private citizens relied on such a service to receive or send urgent messages as well. Today, having an appointment setter has been an integral part of a business process outsourcing (BPO) team. Most of them handle sales calls. While some handle donation requests. Marketing firms outsource appointment settings to remove their in-house staff from the burden of prospecting new clients. Let us take a look at 8 reasons to outsource appointment setting.
WHAT IS APPOINTMENT SETTING?
Appointment setting is the process of contacting target businesses to arrange for a sales meeting. The meeting may either be face-to-face or also by phone. They aim to discuss products and services and how they may be useful to the prospect. The most common tasks of appointment setters include:
- Answering inbound calls to answer queries
- Cold calling among customer lists and leads to schedule sales appointments
- Connect with existing customers to schedule new product discussions
- Keeping firms and organisation updated on new products and services
Appointment setters were hired by organisations to filter the list of leads they have. This frees up their sales team to focus more on high-performing tasks.
8 REASONS TO OUTSOURCE APPOINTMENT SETTING
It may be the right time to outsource your appointment setting. By hiring a team of appointment setters, you will be able to enjoy these 8 benefits.
Customised Solutions
Every company is unique, and so is its sales funnel. By outsourcing appointment setting, your sales team can have a perfect partner to collect leads based on your existing processes.
Find Accurate Data
Sales companies commonly have a CRM in place. But most often, the data stored are inaccurate and irrelevant. Outsourcing appointment setting helps organise your CRM. Appointment setters will find time to correct this data as they call your leads. Their efficiency in the process will help your sales team maximise using your CRM platform.
Hone Your Target Leads
Businesses commonly cover a variety of tasks to operate smoothly. When it comes to marketing, they will need to filter leads, which, in most cases are time-consuming. By outsourcing appointment settings, companies can reach more leads and gain better insights into them. Such insights are helpful to creating high-quality targets.
Identify Buyer Personas
Part of an appointment setter’s task is to collect information about a buyer’s persona. The information they will collect depends on the data required by the contracting companies. Commonly, they include the company size, email address, industry type, and position. These parameters are very helpful to identify the buyer personas and have a more efficient sales funnel.
Improve Lead Quality
Without appointment setters, a company’s sales team can only waste their precious time on bad leads. This can potentially boost down the morale of your sales team because of poor conversion. If you want to deliver higher quality leads and improve project quality, the best solution is to outsource on appointment setting.
Increase Efficiency
Most outsourced appointment setters used the latest technology to maximise your potential targets. Through customer relationship management (CRM) software, they can bring your company better insights on how to increase efficiency in customer retention and sales.
Hit Revenue Goals
It will be easier to hit revenue goals if a company outsources appointment setting. This is because appointment setters work fast in gathering quality leads. More leads mean better chances of conversion to hit your sales target.
More Sales Opportunities
The main target of appointment setters is to turn a lead into a sales prospect. They are the baseline of a flourishing sales funnel. Once they have validated more prospects, your sales team will surely get more sales opportunities.