Every few years, a new product is developed that grabs the attention of the masses. One of the more recent product developments that stimulated public interest was the Apple iPhone. Prior to the iPhone, there was the Blackberry. For companies that develop products or services that seemingly take off on their own, attracting millions to stores to make a purchase, lead generation might not appear to be crucial.
However, absent lead generation, the public generally won’t become aware of products and services. This includes products and services that have been on the market for several months. Wikipedia describes lead generation as, “the generation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be generated for purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for sales leads.”
Appointment setting services provided by companies like Intelliverse are designed to assist organizations with their lead generation tasks. Specific appointment setting services that for-profit and non-profit organizations are relying on to help them meet their lead generation goals include calling up potential leads, setting up appointments for business clients and recording lead calls.
Rather than to demand that businesses contact them to receive lead generation appointment setting reports, companies that provide appointment setting services give their customers access to dashboards. Clients of appointment setting services have total transparency to all of their calls. Data available for review on the dashboards include the date and time that calls were made, the numbers of successful appointment setting calls and the name of each potential business lead that was contacted.
Yet, dashboards and lead call out services are at times not enough. Just as business customers need to see and hear from sales professionals regularly, businesses that use appointment setting services need workers to stay in contact with them as well. That’s why it’s advised that sales professionals set up monthly meetings with workers at the firms before they sign service agreements.
Furthermore, sales professionals and their employers may want to check to see that workers at appointment setting firms have a minimum of two years of B2B sales experience themselves. This experience might come in the form of B2B sales or marketing experience, and, if not that, at least two years of experience servicing companies that engage in B2B sales.
Businesses that can benefit from the services include event planning firms, companies that attend trade shows, financial services firms, information technology companies and government agencies. Both small and medium sized businesses have benefited from the services.
However, it’s still the relationships that sales professionals develop and maintain with leads that will ultimately determine whether they achieve success or not. That means that sales professionals can’t stop at setting appointments with leads, they have to keep appointments.
They also have to make visiting leads in person a priority. For example, sales professionals can take leads to dinner, attend entertainment and sporting events with leads and make it a point to ask leads about their children, careers and other questions that show they, the sales professionals, care about their potential and current clients.
Written by Jill Whitman