Booking sales appointments consistently involves lots of small elements coming together into a big picture of sales success. There is no one silver bullet to making it all happen. Instead, you must optimize each aspect of sales in order to build an experience where prospects are more likely to engage.
Here are a few tricks our reps have learned over the years that make a difference in lead experience — and help them get more sales appointments.
Learn From Others to Cultivate Talent
While many are born with natural abilities, only those who put their abilities into practice actually achieve success. Therefore, instead of worrying about things like not having “natural talent,” study the exact practices people you consider talented use and learn from them. Chances are they have laboriously worked to identify practices that help them succeed. These practices are rarely obvious but rather the result of experimentation, trial and error, or astute observation.
Take advantage of the work these people have put in to discover methods that work better for you. However, dont be afraid to put the work in yourself and read up on relevant articles and books to better your skills, remember, they can be learned! You know that the strategies successful people use bring them that success, so you raise your chances of achieving the same by adopting them. Remember: most inspirational people have others that inspired them.
Tailor Your Approach to Provide Genuine Value to Prospects
Many prospects act wary around sales reps because they feel like the reps “want something.” Shed this reputation by genuinely trying to give rather than to receive. After all, the solution you offer provides genuine value to your customers. Revealing this value involves thinking like your leads and discovering their criteria for determining value.
You can start by adding value right from the start of the sales process. For instance, instead of sending off mindless, generic daily sales emails that contain almost no insights — or even worse, WRONG insights — go out and seek well-researched content specific to the lead’s industry. If you can prove that you are understanding and detail-oriented, rather than someone who mindlessly forwards something, then you can more successfully get their attention.
Track Everything You Send
Sharing links and articles via email is a great approach for your leads, but you want to know if they actually followed the link and how much value they got out of it. To do this, you can use link-shortening platforms like bit.ly that also track use of your link. You can know if someone clicks on it, whether they share it, and other critical insights.
When sending video, use a sales video hosting platform that can offer similar capabilities. Uploading a video to YouTube increases the chance that your lead will become distracted, look at competitors or see something that runs counter to your desired experience. Instead, look to a platform you can white label with your brand. Our reps use our proprietary platform, 2Win Bridge, to track video statistics that even tell you which parts of the video were watched. It also allows you to set up a queue or “playlist” of videos, so you can preface content with a personalized introduction.
The Most Important Thing to Get More Sales Appointments: Pay Attention to Details
Small details make the difference in the sales process. For example, leads want to know you’re a real person. To help them out, you can connect them to your social accounts like LinkedIn with a link included in your signature. You should also regularly search for your own name on the social platforms you use to see what pops up and if there’s anything a prospect would see that would detract from their experience.
Another small detail to think about is your first introduction to someone. Whether through an email subject line or the first few seconds of a phone call, remember that you are setting the tone for future conversations.
Lastly, start writing down everything worth remembering, and create a system to organize it all. Even something as seemingly insignificant as a MLB team cap in a lead’s photo can help you converse more naturally with them and determine things they can relate to. Keep track of everything, and your leads will begin to consider you more thoughtful and in-tune with their needs.
So, what are your secrets to booking more sales appointments? Let us learn from your talent and success by sharing your tips in the comments below!
