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Top SME appointment setting tips for your sales team and channel partners

“In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.” Jean-Paul Sartre.

In the emotive world of football there are some things best left unsaid. While tempting, armchair analysis of England’s performance against Germany in last Sunday’s World Cup match is one such example.   Give it another four years and collective amnesia may mercifully have begun to set in, but until that time…      

Top appointment setting tips for targeting SME decision makers 

Despite the inexorable rise in popularity of Web 2.0, Google Adwords and social media marketing, when it comes to appointment setting, in my experience old fashioned cold calling on the telephone remains the fastest and most cost effective means of getting sales people in front of decision makers.     

Over the years I’ve set countless appointments for myself.  And although in recent years I’ve taken a more hands-off role, I remain involved in training and advising our telemarketers and channel partners on appointment setting techniques. The following strategies are focused on setting appointments for technology companies with decision makers in SMEs.

 Aim for the top

While you wouldn’t place a call to Apple Corp and expect to be put through to Steve Jobs, it doesn’t follow that in most SMEs you can’t aim to speak to the CEO.     

An SME may be defined as an organisation with a headcount from between 10 – 250, and / or a turnover of approximately £2 million- £50 million.   One fact that’s worth noting about the average SME is that the person who makes decisions on major technology purchases is usually not the IT manager; it’s far more likely to be a senior executive and in many cases the CEO or MD themselves. If you target the IT guy you’ll be in danger of talking megs and gigs with someone who has little influence in the ultimate buying decision.  It’s far better to target the CEO first and only work down the line if you fail to get a response.  Go straight in with a message that is designed to appeal to a CEO’s priorities – benefits such as competitive advantage, enhanced productivity and efficiency, cost savings and improved profitability (i.e. not necessarily the same priorities as the IT guy!).

Be upfront

While it may not work with large corporations, a good strategy is to go in with guns blazing from the outset.  Rather than shilly-shallying with an opening litany of niceties and bland open questions, be upfront.  Tell the prospect that the reason for your call is to introduce your company and see if it makes sense to meet face-to-face for 30 minutes.

By couching your suggestion as a closed question too soon in the conversation – i.e. one invites a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer – you are of course in danger of getting a blunt reply in the negative.   The art is to put the prospect in a positive state of mind first by throwing some irresistible pearls of information into your (very brief) opening pitch before you pop the question. Not always easy, granted, but nevertheless very possible with practice. Try writing an opening statement to this effect; continue to use it and fine tune it until you feel it’s working for you.    

More on this subject next time in part 2.

And finally…

Be careful what you wish for…

As a confirmed believer in the astrology, Louis XI of France was hardly surprised when an astrologer correctly foretold that a lady at his court would die in eight days’ time.  However, fearing that an accurate prophet might pose a considerable danger to his rule, he had the man summoned, having ordered that he be thrown from a high window at a certain signal.

“You claim to understand astrology and to know the fate of others,” Louis began, “so tell me at once what your fate will be and how long you have to live.” “I shall die,” the astrologer replied, “just three days before Your Majesty.”

And absolutely finally…

We have recently developed a “Digital Interactive World Cup Lead Generation Campaign” for a client who unfortunately cannot execute the campaign in time, due to last minute internal data issues.  So, in mutual agreement with our client for  wavering the outstanding fees owed  on  this project, we have retained the rights and ownership and are able to now offer this innovative Digital World Cup Lead Generation Campaign to you for just £1,495 + VAT.*   That’s a substantial saving of 70% off the RRP of £5,000. This rate is only offered because the original client has already paid for the majority of the design and development work and we simply want to recoup our profit margin on the job.

Click the url to play the Penalty Shootout which forms part of the interactive lead generation campaign

If you would like to know more about how you could use this innovative lead generation campaign to boost sales for your business please call me on 01256 85 30 40 or email me ncampbell@emarket2.com and I will send you the Campaign overview workflow PDF doc.  *It is offered as a self service campaign for £1,495 +VAT (you roll it out) or on a fully managed basis (we roll it out for you) for £1,995 +VAT whichever suits your budget and resources.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading and, as ever, your comments and ideas are very welcome. 

And always to a higher response!

Norman

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