How do appointment setting companies with limited resources excel at setting sales appointments effectively for market share and new accounts against richer rivals?
They play appointment setting moneyball.
“Moneyball” is a philosophy. No, it is a reality of gaining competitive advantage with fewer resources than your rivals. The concept of playing moneyball entered our conscience with the example of the Oakland Athletics baseball team and their general manager Billy Beane that discarded “common wisdom” for an evidence based approach to competing with much better financed rivals. Their analytics based approach enabled them to find and use players undervalued by others. They win far more than others with bigger budgets and they do it consistently.
Companies that set sales appointments with small budgets can gain more wins against richer competitors. How? By playing appointment setting moneyball and using strategies and appointment setting tips undervalued by others.
One of the key premises of moneyball is that “common wisdom” is flawed. Actually, that is an understatement. In the world of appointment setting techniques “common wisdom” cripples sales productivity and self-sabotages the quest for new accounts.
Those who play b2b appointment setting moneyball use a more evidence based analytics approach.
B2B appointment setting is not rocket science. Those that win more adhere to some pretty basic marketing principles that have stood the test of time.
Those that play B2B appointment setting moneyball accept that:
• You can define groups of records to set sales appointments within that are most fertile for new accounts. You define and prospect that group before you call the rest. Genius.
• Buyers respond to value. Make sure your appointment setting scripts are communicating your value before you start worrying about anything else.
• That there is an optimum number of calls that should be made to a specific decision maker that gives your b2b appointment setting call process the best shot at an appointment. Make no more or less.
• Sales prospecting success demands a ruthless drive for efficiency. Inefficiencies must be eliminated when selecting lists, implementing your call process and writing sales scripts that communicate value.
• Few would argue with the above, yet when it comes to implementation… “common wisdom,” bias, personal comfort and following the herd to nowhere often trumps basic marketing truths.
Those that play b2b appointment setting moneyball grab lollipops from the hands of those that believe cold calling has died.
The best appointment setting companies are more analytics driven. The sales analytics they pay attention to actually have an impact on sales results. Those analytics are 1) determining by research and prior results which lists are best to call. 2) How many time a day or week a call process is launched toward a selected target. 3) How many decision makers are reached daily and weekly? 4) How many appointments are set? 5) Conversion ratio and average value of new accounts.
Those are the analytics that b2b appointment setting moneyball players pay attention to.
What analytics does common wisdom pay attention to? How many calls were made? Very dumb. And the weakest link to sales success. Moneyball b2b appointment setters eschew this accepted measurement and follow analytics that have a greater impact on success.
Moneyball appointment setters are fanatics about efficiency.
List efficiency. Call process efficiency. Value communication efficiency. Prospecting efficiency beats better financed rivals. All the time.
When you play appointment setting moneyball you spend just a few hundred dollars on tools that enable you to get results efficiently rather than a more traditional approach that spends thousands on popular tools that slow you down and don’t have basic functionality that impact results (but they have plenty of sexy sounding crap that you will never use.)
When you play appointment setting moneyball you actually spend a few hours RESEARCHING past results for the highest probability list selection rather than take the more traditional approach of buying thousands of lead records and just start calling.
When you play appointment setting moneyball you consistently use efficient call processes and appointment setting script structures that get you to the decision-maker in the least amount of time and communicate your value. You set more sales appointments by ripping out wasted dials and words that inhibit your progress.
“Common wisdom” accepts that cold calling has died, that making more dials gets you more results and that you can call lists that are wide rather than deep as “you never know,” so just call call call.
But moneyball appointment setters use analytics and results based research to select the lists, call practices and script structures that enable them to set more sales appointments with less.
Play ball!!
