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Home > Doing The Job For Free
Doing The Job For Free
By: Brian Grinonneau
Making the decision to use sales appointment setters is not really so
hard. If you consider all of the facts, the choice is simple really.
Separating sales appointment setting from the actual sales process is
plain and simple smart. It fills anemic pipelines, evens out revenue
droughts, provides meaningful reporting, improves morale, greatly
reduces oversight, helps you make more money and it can be done free.
The word free has lost its meaning over the years. Free means something with a lot of strings attached that may really cost more than if you would buy the item outright. To be fair, in the case of sales appointment setting, the better term would be zero net cost rather than free.
Imagine your company has a staff of three outside sales reps. (Good salespeople all but lacking the time or desire to prospect and cold call. It is not unusual. In fact, there is nary a company exec who doesn't echo that very complaint on a daily basis.) You make the decision to employ a sales appointment setting firm to schedule the sales meetings. The hook is, the sales reps will pay for the service - pay for their new appointments.
Management usually gasps at this suggestion saying the sales reps will refuse, complain profanely, quit and take their book of business to a competitor. Yes, they will complain loud and long. No, they won't quit. As the program is explained, they will understand that this makes their job easier and in fact, helps them make more money - money that dwarfs what they are now paying for an appointment setter. |
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The typical sales rep spends 80% of his day servicing, schmoozing, following up and involving himself in non-sales activities. It leaves precious little time to prospect and cold call to find new clients. Before long it cuts into his earnings and the company profits forcing him into frenetic activity to try to make quota and maintain the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed. Frenetic sales activity is a poor substitute for the orderly sales process prospects demand.
The appointment setting firm, statistically, will improve selling activity by 30% on average. It provides a regular, steady stream of prospects on whom to call. What is more the appointment setter becomes the inside sales rep helping his outside counterpart sell more by providing, in addition to appointments, leads, requests for information and other revenue generating information. The appointment setter becomes the keeper of the calendar, the follow-up man, and the cheerleader. Before long your sales rep is happier, much more productive and there is little need for sales management.
Free appointment setting or zero net cost appointment setting. You pick the term but know that it will change the face of your sales organization in the most positive manner ever. You may even rethink your take on the word free.
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