A convincing speaker is an artist who very well knows how to hypnotize listeners with words. The same theory applies to a seller who successfully convinces people to buy his products. In this article I will be discussing about the concept of appointment selling which, if utilized in a proper way, can improve your sales drastically. It is a commonly used selling trick, which in a way has increased the competition among businesses.
A person receives thousands of sales phone calls on a daily basis and most of the time these calls are ignored. That is why it is essential for an appointment setter to be convincing enough to make the potential customer listen to him thoroughly. Then comes the question of buying.
An appointment setter has to get rid of the old and monotonous way of initiating sales calls. The first and foremost important thing for them is to grow interest amongst the listeners in the conversation.
Here are some tricks of appointment setting that will surely help you in fixing qualified appointments through calls.
1. Do not try to sell over phone
Setting an appointment is definitely a part of selling but do not jump into it at the beginning of the discussion. Your ultimate motto is definitely selling but your immediate motto is to set an appointment. If you sound like a sales person to your prospect, he might lose interest in your call.
Purchasing decision cannot be made on calls and as an appointment setter you should refrain yourself from trying to do that. Neither of you should make plans to sell or buy products or services at this stage. You need to prove it to your potential client with your words that you called up to fix an appointment not to sell products.
2.Make a script
To advertise a product or service in a best way possible it is important for the caller to hold sufficient knowledge on it. It is recommended for them to make a script framework after the training is done. He could also initiate trial calls, based on the script, for the best results.
This simplifies the entire process of fixing appointments for the callers. It is to be noted that the callers should not be forced to use the exact language given on the script. It is all about making the conversation authentic and reliable to the customers.
The script will help you in the following way
- Dealing with the gatekeeper
- handling negative responses
- Building rapport and
- Understanding the prospect
3 Prepare yourself for objections
Objections are an inseparable part of such cold calling. It really does not matter how eloquent you are as a speaker, you will face objections inevitably. The best way to handle this, is to be prepared for it. A dedicated appointment setter puts his efforts to find ways to manage such calls with ease.
4. Give them options
While scheduling meetings an appointment setter should offer at least a couple of dates to the prospect so that they remain available for the meeting on their preferred date and time. If you offer two dates to your prospects, they would not be able to give the excuse of being busy on a particular date. Being specific about the choices of dates will add a bit more importance to the appointment.
5. Sell appointment
Always remember that you are calling a prospect to fix an appointment and your focus should be on that only. Callers often get distracted from the aim and try to sell products in call which is no less than a disaster. Put emphasis on selling the appointment instead on products and services. You need to grow the potential customers’ interest in the conversation so that they listen to you. You can do the following to achieve that
- make them laugh
- offer them something beneficial
- solve their problems and
- be fast and straight forward
Once the ice breaking session is over, it becomes easier for you to continue the chat. You can start sharing information with them about the product and finally when they seem to be convinced, schedule an appointment based on their convenience.
