Callbox Sales & Marketing Solutions

How to Outsource Appointment Setting Tasks

By Kurt Duncan

Your business is built on sales of your products and services, but to sell those things you need to speak with potential customers. Getting appointments can take a lot of time, time that would be better set actually working with customers. It’s a classic case of what comes first, the cart or the horse.

The good news is that you don’t have to do it all yourself. You can hire someone to cold call prospects and answer phones when leads contact you. But, having an employee is work, too. You have to train them, provide guidance and monitor their performance.

There is another alternative. You can hire a service to handle appointment setting for you.  By hiring another company to set appointments and handle calls for you, the need to supervise an employee is eliminated. The call center service is responsible to hiring, training, and supervising the employees that will work on your account. All you need to do is provide your representative with the information they need to train their staff to represent you. Some background on your company, product and services, your goals, and you can even provide a phone script that their staff will use when making and taking calls on your behalf.

Once you’ve found a call center that’s a good fit for your business, your appointment setting tasks will be outsourced and you can focus on what you do best, growing your business. If you’ve never worked with a remote call team before, you may be wondering what you should be looking for to ensure you hire the right business partner.  A few things to taking into consideration include:
The people making and taking calls on your behalf should be native speakers of the English language. The last thing you need is for a lead to be burned because the potential customer couldn’t understand what was being said.

The company you hire should be experienced with the art of appointment setting. You know it’s more than making a call and saying what time shall we meet. You have to first sell the prospect on wanting to meet with you to learn more.

The company should be dedicated to training their staff to be able to make telemarketing calls with confidence and to sound like they are actually an integral member of your team.

Once you think you’ve found a great resource, you’ll want to check references and talk to other customers of the company you’re seeking to hire.  This final step will give you the confidence that you’re hiring the right team, or reveal issues that you won’t have to discover on your own.