Appointment setting is about interacting with the right targets – 50% of the reason for success.

Transcript – lightly edited.

But I would be, I would not be. An expert on appointment setting. If I didn’t point out, there’s a lot more to it than just scripting. And I really want to make that clear. Interacting with the right targets is 50 percent of the reason why you’re going to be successful. And I want you to keep in mind that those who look like your best clients, Are most likely to become your new clients.

It’s marketing 101. Okay. And when you, and I see this all the time where companies have these giant pools of targets, they say, well, anybody could be , our client, or you never know. And they, they tend to cast the net very wide, but the problem with that is that instead of just focusing on your,  higher value, high probability targets And then working into your lower value groups, you’re spread out way too thin.

So I always like to,, segment,, prospect groups into it. I like to keep [00:01:00] it simple into A, B, C, D, and E groups. So a C would be, , companies that tend to look like the bread and butter clients. Okay. , decent. You make some profit. Let’s call them the average clients. And then the B group is that segment, which tends to be better than average.

However, you define that. , and obviously your A’s are your bullseye clients. Boom.  They look just like your best clients. And,  those are the ones you want to identify in. You want to get into play first and then your D’s. Are those that are acceptable, but below average, not great. And then your E’s are all the rest.

And what I want you to consider. Think about this is that when you’re calling those groups are not equal size. It’s not 20, 20, 20, 20, 20 adding up to 100. And I’ll give you an example that, , and this is very [00:02:00] typical is I work with in one industry. Where, what we’ve proven through a lot of different projects is that 50 percent of their great clients come from a profile of just 3 percent of their suspects.

And that’s very typical. And so the issue there is if you were going to try to prospect and you knew that 50 percent of your good business came from just 3 percent of the records, Where are you going to get the most results? Spending time in the 3 percent that delivers you the 50 percent of the business or the other 97 percent that delivers you 50 percent of the business.

And too often, one of the biggest mistakes I see is people just get a list and they figure out just start calling and they don’t put a little time into, and it doesn’t take much time. It takes a couple of hours, which is boggles my mind that people don’t do this to really get a handle of what an A suspect [00:03:00] look likes versus a B versus a C.

And that little extra time really, increases your odds of not only getting meetings, but getting worthwhile business, which is what this is really about. This is not about meetings. This is about closing business. , I want you to keep in mind in terms of expectations that, 15 to 20 percent of those that you call or interact with are open to change.

That’s it. So even when you have a good group of records, , I don’t care what the industry is, not everybody’s looking to change. And my own philosophy over the years I developed, I always would call it 15 to 18%. We’re open to a change, you know, a few people I respect that I think it’s 15 to 20%.

So it’s in that range. So 15 To 20 percent have buying on their radar or they’re open to find a new vendor within a reasonable period of time, which I’ve always [00:04:00] defined is 3 to 15 months, only 3 percent of the people that you’re going to interact with actually are thinking about are in active mode in terms of, Changing vendors right now or buying right now.

So remember when you prospect and almost everybody I deal with. Is selling something that people don’t buy frequently, which means that you’re far more likely to reach somebody that does not have this on their radar than you are to have something on their radar.

You’re far more likely to reach someone who is more likely to buy three months, six months, nine months, 12 months down the road than somebody who’s going to buy right now. And in fact, I will tell you that the most successful appointment setters are the ones that understand that and understand that when you interact with someone and you work so hard to get an interaction that most of the time success is,  [00:05:00] getting them to tell you when the best time to call them back in is because you make all the calls, And they may say no, no, no.

But if you ask the right way in terms of when to call back, you’re going to get what I call is a qualified callback. You mean a company that fits your, your profile that, You’ve gone through your scripting so you get your credibility what you do the benefits, you know what you want, and they see enough, so they’re willing to share with you.