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6 Important Skills of Appointment Setters

Jan 17, 2023 • 12 min read

Who is an Appointment Setter?

Appointment setting is one of those jobs that sounds like it requires tons of experience and training, but really isn’t. In fact, you don’t even need much extensive education (a school diploma and sales experience) to become an appointment setter.

An appointment setter is usually a person who works in sales or business development (SDRs, BDRs, and Sales Reps) and follows a process to ultimately set up a meeting or call between the business and potential customers/potential clients.

You just need to know how to find leads, qualify them, and make sure they convert into clients.

The appointment setting process can involve making cold calls/cold calling, schedule appointments according to available appointment slots and time slots, finding potential leads, handling appointment cancellations, etc.

The job description doesn’t sound too exciting, but there are plenty of opportunities out there for people looking to break into sales. Once you start working as an appointment setter, you’ll see why it’s such a popular career choice.

You’ll learn:

  • Is Appointment Setting Hard?
  • Appointment Setting Skills
  • What makes a successful appointment setter?

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Is Appointment Setting Hard?

Appointment setting is just another way to market your business. And there are many different ways to do it. But don’t let that scare you away. If you want to succeed, you need to learn what works best for your business. So here are some tips to help you out.

1. How Much Should You Spend On Appointments?

This is one of the most common questions I hear from small businesses. Is it worth spending $100 per month on appointment setting? Or should you spend less?

2. Do Your Research First

If you’re going to invest money into appointment setting, make sure you know exactly where to put it.

3. Choose A Service Provider Wisely

There are plenty of companies out there offering appointment setting services. Some charge a low monthly fee while others offer a high upfront cost. Before choosing a provider, ask yourself what type of return you’ll see. It also helps to use vetted platforms.

Appointment Setting Skills

Other skills appointment setters could generally have include:

  • Calendar management
  • Social media management
  • Scheduling an appointment via email
  • Scheduling an appointment via phone, outbound and inbound call management duties
  • Working in outbound sales, scheduling appointments for company sales, B2C sales
  • Working before the appointment window closes when making appointments for sales
  • Coming up with and working with a list of prospects – prospecting clients and interaction with prospects
  • Answering sales questions and providing customer examples
  • Event planning
woman working remotely as a virtual assistant

What makes a successful appointment setter?

1. Has a schedule

Salespeople often struggle with how to organize themselves for success. They know what needs to happen, but don’t always know where to start. Here are some tips to help you develop an effective sales process:

  • A sales process should include a well thought out plan for every step. You’ll want to consider the following questions:
  • What are my goals? What do I hope to accomplish today? How am I going to reach those goals? Who will I talk to? Where will I go next? When will I follow up?
  • You should also think about the time zones of your contacts. If someone is based in New York and you’re located in California, it might make sense to work together during the day. But if you’re both working late hours, it could be better to communicate via email or phone call.
  • Finally, think about the resources you have available. Do you have access to a calendar? Can you use a task management system like Asana? Are there apps you can use to track your progress?
  • Keep yourself organized

If you keep yourself organized, you won’t waste time searching for things. Instead, you’ll find everything you need quickly.

2. Knows how to qualify B2B prospects

Lead qualification is one of those things that sounds simple enough, but there are many ways to go about it. And while some lead qualification techniques work better than others, there is no question that the quality of the leads you generate depends heavily on the methodologies used to qualify them. In a study, companies who use lead generation software like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and HubSpot were found to tend to generate higher-quality leads because they have access to data that allows them to make educated decisions about where to send each lead.

In addition to having access to useful data, these companies are able to leverage their marketing automation systems to automate the entire lead qualification process. For example, HubSpot uses intelligent algorithms to identify the most appropriate contact within the customer relationship management (CRM) system, automatically populate the email template with relevant information, and even suggest follow up actions based on previous interactions. This makes the whole process much less labor intensive and allows marketers to spend more time focusing on generating high-value leads rather than manually entering data.

The bottom line is that you want to find out as much as possible about each potential buyer before you start selling. If you do this effectively, you’ll increase the chances of converting them into customers.

3. Listens and builds rapport

A good salesperson should be able to speak well about themselves and answer questions while still being humble and respectful. This is because it helps them build rapport with the prospect and make them feel comfortable enough to open up and tell them what they want.

Listening skills are just as vital as speaking skills, and they are equally crucial to selling successfully. When we talk about listening, we mean hearing the customer’s needs and wants, understanding how he feels, and responding appropriately. If you don’t listen to the customer, you won’t know what he wants, and you won’t be able to provide him with exactly what he needs.

Being able to build rapport is one of the most important skills that every sales professional must master. Building rapport starts with establishing trust and credibility with the customer. Once you do that, you can start asking questions and finding out what problems the customer might have. You can ask probing questions, such as “What do you think is holding you back?” and “How could I help you?”

When you build rapport with customers, you give them confidence in you, and they will let down their guard and reveal more information.

4. Handles sales objections and rejections

Sales objections are common and should never be ignored. They happen because prospects don’t understand what you are offering or they just aren’t interested. Handling objections well helps you avoid lost deals and keep good relationships with clients.

Objection handling is part of every sales process and should be handled before the close of the deal. If you wait until the end, it could cost you money and damage your relationship with the prospect.

A skilled appointment setter knows exactly how to handle objections without losing face. He/she understands the value of objections and uses them to his/her advantage.

5. Reminds and follows-up

Sales people must remember to send reminders to prospects and customers throughout the sales cycle. They also need to make sure that the customer receives follow up emails even if it takes weeks or months to close the sale. This is especially true for B2C companies where there is usually a lot of time between initial contact and purchase.

Lead generation campaigns don’t stop until you close the deal. You want to make sure that every lead gets nurtured and converted into a prospect. If you’re selling to enterprise buyers, you’ll likely need to do some additional work to qualify leads and ensure that they’re ready to buy. But regardless of whether you’re dealing with B2C or B2B, you still need to nurture leads and convert them into prospects.

6. Pitches perfectly

The most important part of pitching is being able to tell a story about yourself and your product/service. You want to make it easy for someone to understand why you are better than everyone else.

You don’t have to go into detail, just give a quick overview of what makes you unique. If you do decide to dive deeper, keep it short and sweet.

Here are some examples of good pitcher intros:

1. I am a freelance writer looking to build my portfolio. I write articles for local businesses and magazines. My writing style is conversational and engaging.

2. I am a digital marketing consultant helping small businesses grow online. I focus on building trust with customers and increasing conversions.

3. I am a graphic designer specializing in logos and branding. I work closely with clients to ensure we meet their needs.

4. I am a web developer who specializes in WordPress. I help people build beautiful sites that convert visitors into leads.

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Conclusion

Your appointment setters are key to keeping your sales team productive. They’re often the ones calling prospects, setting appointments, and following up with clients. So it makes sense that you want to make sure they know how to do those things well.

Hiring an appointment setter

When hiring a remote appointment setter, the most important thing is that they are vetted. The DigiWorks platform helps business owners build their remote teams with 100% vetted VAs and remote team members. Speak to us today to find out more!

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About DigiWorks

DigiWorks is an easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and start ups hire amazing remote talent from around the world. DigiWorks offers a way for you to hire, manage and pay people from all countries. If you find an amazing virtual assistant from Philippines, a content writer from Nigeria, or operations manager from South Africa – manage and pay your entire team from one platform with no hassle.

If you’re looking for a more affordable and sustainable option you might consider making use of a hiring platform like DigiWorks. Virtual assistant companies or platforms like DigiWorks are amazing as they not only match you with pre-vetted and assessed remote workers that can take care of all your business needs but they will also handle all onboarding and payroll needs as well.