B2B Appointment Setting: A Guide for B2B Sales | CIENCE

What Is B2B Appointment Setting?

B2B appointment setting is a sales process of reaching out to potential buyers via various channels (phone, email, and social media), qualifying and nurturing them during this process with the ultimate goal of setting an appointment. 

Appointment setting helps expand your sales funnel and grow your business. People in charge of this process are called appointment setters and usually hold a sales development representative (SDR) position. Find out more about appointment setters and what skills are needed to become top of the SDR game.

When the appointment is set, the spotlight turns to sales executives, whose job is to turn that meeting into a landed deal.

Appointment setting process

There are several important stages involved in the appointment setting process to help SDRs target the right prospects:

1. Define the target. The appointment setting process starts with defining who you want to target. First, you should create an ideal customer profile (ICP) and a buyer persona (BP). An ICP summarizes the main features of your past customers who define your future customers. This information will be a lead map for your researchers and used by the appointment setters during the outreach.
   
   The BP focuses on specific personal and social characteristics that will clear up the motives of your potential buyer. You can think of it as useful instructions on how to target prospects. The ICP and BP are used throughout the entire lead generation process.  
2. Find the target. Researchers begin their expedition to find the leads who can result in qualified B2B appointments. A skilled researcher knows how to analyze ICPs and BPs, and look for leads and their contact information. The higher quality data they provide, the more chances an SDR has to schedule an appointment. 
3. Research the target. Before contacting a potential client, SDRs, a.k.a. appointment setters, must conduct their own research. Professional copywriters create all messaging for outbound campaigns (calling scripts, social media messages, and email copy), leaving space for creativity and personalization.
   
   SDRs should gather any information that can personalize the outreach and make it feel human and personally crafted. According to our recent survey, 46% of prospects say personalization is the most effective way to land them as customers.
4. Reach the target. The active phase of appointment setting starts when an SDR first contacts the potential customer. It can be done through various channels (phone, email, and social media); the most popular methods are email or phone outreach. According to Medium, 75% of executives are willing to make an appointment or attend an event based solely on a cold email or a cold call.

When Does a Company Need B2B Appointment Setting?

B2B appointment setting should be a key factor in all deal-conversion processes. The best time for a company to start deploying appointment setting efforts is as soon as the product team has developed an accurate demo of whatever product or service the brand wants to offer. 

The following two characteristics can indicate that your business would greatly benefit from B2B appointment setting:

Promoting high-priced B2B products

If your company specializes in huge deals or high-ticket services, closing a sale probably entails many touchpoints and persuading various stakeholders through account-based sales (ABS).

To lessen the amount of work, B2B appointment setting efforts should focus on finding crucial decision-makers while continuously following up with prospects until they are prepared for a more complex pitch meeting.

Lengthy sales cycles

A long sales cycle is a natural part of the complex B2B environment. B2B appointment setting helps brands to shorten the sales journey by allowing the SDRs to jump in once the prospects are qualified and ready to purchase.

Expert appointment setters are well trained in inbound and outbound marketing strategies, pushing the sales process forward, which becomes an excellent opportunity for closers.

B2B Appointment Setting Through Email

Cold emailing is one of the most effective ways to reach potential clients. A cold email is an initial email meant to start business conversations and is sent to the recipients without any prior contact. And there is a lot of science going on behind one sales email. 

Moreover, it’s forty times more effective at getting new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined. However, don’t misinterpret the cold emailing principle; it doesn't imply that you'll be able to set an appointment via the first email you ever send.

How to set appointments via email

Follow these three essential steps to successfully set up an appointment with a prospect: 

1. Plan. Planning involves sending out a few emails in order to schedule that appointment. That means creating a cold email strategy and deciding on waves and cadences. We suggest three to five waves, with at least a few days in between them.
2. Create content. Now you can start preparing the actual content of your emails. A cold email consists of a subject line, opening line, sales pitch, closing line, and signature. Copywriters who create email templates always leave spots for personalization so the message can feel personally crafted.
3. Send the email. After the SDRs personalize the email, they send it out according to the receiver's time zone. 

The better emails you create, the more chances you have to set an appointment. Your emails must be personalized, human, and full of value. They should be sent at the right time and day and to the right person. If all of these puzzle pieces come together, you’ll be able to set an appointment through email.  

B2B Appointment Setting Over the Phone

Another way to schedule an appointment is through the phone, and in the lead generation saga, cold calling is responsible for that. Cold calling is a tricky subject: While some say it’s the best way to reach prospects, others consider it dead. We say it’s neither.

Cold calling is highly effective when combined with other types of outreach to warm it up (cold emailing, social media messaging, ads, etc.). Still, it also requires some persistence—most salespeople give up after a couple of attempts to reach a prospect over the phone. 

How to set appointments via the phone 

Use these four cold calling techniques to set up more appointments with prospects:  

1. Prepare. Professional researchers know how to find accurate and up-to-date information, including the correct telephone numbers. Be sure to find a direct line that connects right to the lead to avoid the gatekeeper.
2. Warm-up. Before starting the outreach, it’s better to warm up your contacts. Cold calling is best paired with cold emailing, making a multichannel approach highly productive.
3. Create a message. Before you pick up the phone, prepare what you are going to say. To achieve that, you must be fully aware of the value proposition, use personalization, and have a calling script in hand.
4. Just call. The actual moment of asking for an appointment over the phone can seem terrifying. But don’t worry. you are most likely to succeed if you have a good lead, a message to warm it up, an appointment setting script, and some personalization in your bag of tricks.

B2B Appointment setting scripts 

You never know what might happen during the appointment setting over the phone. The prospect might throw you off: their tone, manner of speaking, or the question. To ensure you won’t lose the ability to communicate, you should always have an appointment setting script by your side.  

Appointment setting scripts are helpful to train SDRs, deal with call reluctance, control the conversation, prepare for the next call, deliver the value proposition, and lift the SDR’s confidence. 

The best appointment setting scripts include: 

• Introduction. The start of a conversation, including a proper greeting phrase, is significant to building rapport. A well-written script has a few options for conversation openers that state who you are and what company you represent. Since your cold call is not a monologue, we suggest taking pauses in your speech to give the prospect time to talk.
• FAQ (frequently asked questions). What do you do? Why are you better than your competitors? How much does it cost? A set of answers to these questions is the perfect glossary right on your desk. 
• Prequalifying questions. Before setting an appointment, define whether you are looking at a qualified lead—someone who may actually go down your sales funnel. There are at least a dozen methodologies for that, but CIENCE prefers NOTE.
• Value proposition. It’s the key component of your sales pitch. You have to clearly show why your service can make a difference AND make your pitch client-centered. Make your message more about them and always bring value to the table.
• Appointment setting. If you’ve had a successful communication with a prospect, this is when you’ll want to negotiate the next steps. This can be either by following up (in case more information is needed) or scheduling an appointment. 

Appointment setting scripts won’t do all the work for you; however, they will help connect you to the person on the other side of the line. Use your value proposition, personalization, and copywriter's content to engage the prospect. It’s also recommended to have a resource with common objections and ways to handle them.

Most importantly, listen and be human. And whenever you require some coaching, use cold calling scripts to help you through the pitch.

Best Time to Set Appointments

According to the sales specialization principle, the work of SDR is done once the appointment is scheduled, yet there is more you can do to minimize the risk of a no-show for your sales executives. Although there’s no universal time of the week that will work for all of your prospects, there are some time slots you can avoid.

According to Salesloft, the worst time to schedule a meeting is in the morning from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. These three hours have the highest no-show rate. Conversely, the best time to set appointments is at the end of the day, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. 

As for the days of the week, that same survey shows that Mondays and Wednesdays have the lowest no-show rates compared to Friday, which has the highest.

Avoid Monday mornings and Friday evenings in general; people are usually distracted by other plans during this time. 

B2B Appointment Setting Pro Tips

Now that we’ve hit on the mechanisms of the appointment setting process, use these highly effective tips to achieve maximum results: 

1. Always ask for an appointment.

2. Know your audience.

3. Be human.

4. Use your value.

5. Use a multichannel strategy.

6. Choose the right time for the outreach.

7. Follow up and circle back.

8. Use interactive content.

9. Use your humor.

Should You Outsource Appointment Setting?

Outsourcing an appointment setting company has become a top choice for many B2B brands. They have found that it is possible to avoid the cost and effort of filling this role internally while also accepting that there are a lot of training expenses involved in perfecting B2B appointment setting.

• Recruiting for the high turnover of SEs and SDR positions
• Constantly educating and preparing new SEs and SDRs
• Licensing for lead appointment setting hardware and software

Before outsourcing to an appointment setting team, consider the achieved KPIs and other metrics in the recent past. If the results failed to meet your expectations, this might indicate that your company should focus on what it does best and leave the lead-pursuing to the pros.

Leverage B2B Appointment Setting to Boost Your Sales

Lead generation, lead qualification, lead research, targeting, and appointment setting are all among the sales specializations that take time to master.

Though we’ve discussed the many fine points of what B2B appointment setters do, how appointment setting works, ways to ask for appointments, and even shared the tricks that have made us successful, it's still not the same as doing it professionally for years.

CIENCE has positioned itself as one of the top B2B appointment setting providers in the industry. So, if you need some experienced pros to work on outbound strategies for your business, you know where to find us.