Q: What goals are realistic for prospecting to get appointments?
A: Forget phone prospecting for appointments.
Effective lead generation and list building are about qualifying prospects for future contacts.
You are calling to get information -- NOT to book an appointment!
That means finding out if your prospect qualifies being added to the front end of your sales funnel.
Picture a crowded room.
Your goal: find the folks interested --- more or less --- in what you offer.
How to do it? Ask for a show of hands.
There, that's the goal of your cold call ---
- finding the right prospects
- separating them from the crowd
- qualifying their interest level
My goodness --- now you have three goals!
Also, view each call as a means for fine tuning your prospect database.
It's a work in progress that never ends!
How QUALITY Appointments Develop
It is by working your prospect list with emails and real-time follow-up calls that your appointments will develop.
Today's business marketing by phone is about building trust...strengthening relationships...and educating your prospects on how you can help them.
Sure, it's a process.
But it pays you back with higher close rates and more repeat customers than one call telemarketing ever did.
You may have overlooked this appointment setting strategy completely.
Or have been hooked into trying it by call centers that are not suited for your particular industry niche.
But sales prospecting with the right personal touch is a practical way to get new customers and keep your existing customers from drifting away.
Effective Pre-sales Discovery Process Explained

Finding new customers is never easy.
Especially now...because information overload makes us skeptical and hesitant to believe anything from anyone.
Consider your emails and voice-mails.
How many were sent to you today?
- Same overload your prospects deal with...day after day.
How to get your message through this clutter...so they believe what you can do for them is true and not just another sales pitch?
Effective pre-sales telemarketing discovery process
I'm talking about speaking directly with your prospects by phone.
This is where an effective discovery call telemarketing process comes in ----
Something you are not used to doing yourself...and probably not something you are used to receiving in your office.
- It's here most sales organizations --- maybe yours too --- drop the ball.
This kind of follow-up is not sending out email blasts.
It is NOT one-call appointment setting.
It is NOT hit or miss boiler-room telemarketing.
It's not a CRM app you download onto your smart phone.
And it's NOT intrusive or annoying like the telemarketing calls you are used to getting.
But something entirely different.
Call it old-school but an effective pre-sales telemarketing discovery process still works.
And don't kid yourself.
You know that even if you had time you would do anyting but work the phones and make those real-time follow-up calls. Just something you are not cut out to do.
So you get other people to make those calls for you.
You hire a telemarketer.
Or you outsource to a telemarketing call center.
Either way you probably end up with the same result --- mostly junk leads that go nowhere.
Then there's your sales rep problem --- remember, you're paying them to bring you new business.
You leave it to them for reaching out to your prospects and to your customers.
But they tell you the same story...over and over ---
--- how they want to make those calls...but never get around to actually doing it (even your best reps are too busy handling their own customers to develop new clients).
And what about voice-mail and email?
You and everyone else looking for new customers have over-used voice-mail and email so much that your messages are pretty much ignored and left unaswered.
Effective Discovery Call Telemarketing Procees For You
First of all, I do NOT outsource to call centers.
All the prospecting and follow-up calls I do myself.

Working the phones and making the calls I establish one to one personal contact with your new business prospects in a very personal way...ahead of the bigger companies with larger, less personalized sales and marketing organizations.
What my pre-sales discovery process can do for you...
- Build your prospect list with introductory cold calls.
- Develop these prospects with lead nurturing follow-up calls.
- Get you Appointments by methodically working this prospect list.
- Make your sales process more efficient so every sales lead gets followed up.
- Give you full notes & clear records of each sales prospecting call at all stages.
- Give you DAILY Call Outcome Reports so you can share information and adjust tactics.
- Save you money…by testing small B2B Sales Generation TRIAL PROJECTS.