How an Appointment Setter Can Maximize Your CRM

For some time now, I've been looking at the appointment setting / appointment setter role. This is interesting because the appointment setting / appointment setter is a very important person and functions as a gatekeeper between the customers and the actual sales professionals. Without such a role, it would be very difficult for a salesperson to do his or her job. After all, what if the client just wants a simple yes / no answer and no one is answering their questions? This would be very unfriendly for both the client and the sales professional.

There are other positions in which appointment setters have to play: business development specialist, sales representative, junior sales representative, digital product marketing manager, assistant business development manager, and so on. However, to emphasize some activities more closely related to appointment setting job: Assistance in setting up qualified leads, rejection avoidance, subsequent callbacks, follow-up. After all, this is a critical function. If the sales representative does not receive qualified leads, the job is pretty much worthless to him. Therefore, he needs to be very good at it.

In addition, it was also pointed out to me that appointment setting appointments are probably more important than we think. And, we sales reps seem to confirm this. We often make appointments without much thought to the follow-up, simply to get the appointment started, and when that becomes a problem, we have a hard time getting the follow-up we need.

It is my contention that a business development rep needs to understand and be good at appointment setting inbound calls. This may not seem obvious to a sales person, who is more focused on inbound call flow. However, I have seen many times where the sales representatives really appreciated the setting of appointments, because they felt as though their customers were being set up for follow-ups.

The fact is that appointment setter are also necessary crm representatives. That makes perfect sense. After all, most sales teams have no CRM (customer relationship management) system. Without a CRM system, your sales team has to spend hours trying to identify sales leads. If the leads are not pre-qualified, then your sales team has to spend even more time chasing them down!

And, most CRM systems do not allow sales teams to track those prospects, either. This is where appointment setting comes in. The appointment setting process allows you to record information about prospects, such as their name, address, email address, phone number, and other contact details. Then, you can send out mailings or follow-up letters, or else call those prospects on your own. If you record the lead's email address, then you can actually use that email to email other prospects in the future, as well.

So, does an appointment setting system to give you a competitive advantage over the competition? Actually, it does. With a CRM system, your sales team can follow-up with prospects, and schedule future appointments even if you have a full-time staff. So, while the appointment setter works on reducing your labor costs, your sales team can increase their annual salary!

So, what should you do if you are planning to add an appointment setter to your business? First, evaluate whether your current CRM software solution provides contact details for prospects. If it doesn't, consider adding this feature. Second, get a list of prospects from your CRM database. If you already have a list, use it to make future contacts.

What should an appointment setter do in order to optimize his efficiency? First, he should be able to prioritize tasks. For example, if he has a prospect who is extremely important, he should not be required to do all the tasks in his current list. An appointment setter should set up one or two important tasks for him, so that he doesn't try to do too much at once. Also, an appointment setter may want to prioritize sales tasks, and then provide a follow-up for those prospects. This means that the sales representative will be able to call up the prospects several times a week, but will only have to send out the messages if they are important.

In addition, appointment setters must be able to measure their effectiveness based on their efficiency. Some salespeople feel that if they just send out messages, and if they don't hit their targets, then they will not really see a tangible benefit from the CRM system. However, when the system is properly used, a salesperson can see how effective his communications are, and can adjust his approach accordingly.

Finally, an appointment setter should be able to save time. Remember that every sales representative has limited number of minutes per call. The more calls he makes, the fewer minutes he can use to talk to each prospect. As a result, an appointment setter will require the sales representative to plan ahead of time and to prioritize his calls. This will allow the sales representative to make optimum use of each minute.