More and more B2B companies are outsourcing the job of setting appointments. Instead of having their sales reps make cold calls and fill their own schedule, they outsource to a B2B Appointment Setting specialist firm.

You may have heard the axiom that “content is king.” If you have, you most likely heard it in the context of building an audience for a web site or to get attendees for an event. Most business people would not think about the importance of content in the context of getting on the phone to generate appointments and sales leads.

 Content is important for outbound marketing activities and if you plan to invest in outbound marketing, you better have some good content.

B2b Lead Generation and Appointment Setting means winning at the top of the sales funnel.

Winning at the top of the sales funnel means coordinating people, systems and content to get your story into the minds of your prospect audience so they are persuaded to have a conversation with you (an appointment.)

If you are not familiar with “Lead Nurturing” it is the business process of setting up a system to maintain contact with potential customers with information offers to educate prospects about your product or service. This is a very basic definition.

In a sense, Lead Nurturing is not new. If you were a sales rep in decades past, you may  have had a sales manager that insisted that you setup a “tickler file” and stay in contact with your sales prospects over time.

From the Desk of Joe Prospect

How do you get your prospects to trust you?

 This really is the million dollar question.  When it comes right down to it, selling is all about getting your prospects to trust you.

So what makes me trust you more than the next guy who is selling your product or service?

1. YOU ARE NOT UPDATING AND GROWING YOUR PROSPECT LIST

Your database of prospects represents the present and future value of your business.  If you are not consistently updating your prospect database you are losing sales.  Every wrong contact name, bad email address and company that you do not know is out of business, is costing you sales.   You are wasting time marketing to the wrong companies and the wrong people.  And if you are not consistently adding new prospects to your marketing database, your sales will automatically shrink.

TOP 3 EXCUSES TO STOP MARKETING

1. The Economy is Down:

OK so when was the last time the economy was up? Can you even remember when the economy was up? By the way, it is a big myth that advertising in a down economy doesn’t pay.

FROM THE DESK OF JOE PROSPECT

Here is the picture that comes into my head when I receive a call from  a salesperson trying to book an appointment with me. I see myself sitting at my desk going through the obligatory ‘rapport building.  Then I see myself suffering through a sales pitch that goes on a lot longer than it is supposed to. Then I know I will have to fend off The Close and pry the sales rep out  of the chair and push them out the door.

Failing to Consistently Communicate With Your Prospects is The Most Costly Marketing Mistake

Most traditional marketing methods are not very effective. Let’s take traditional telemarketing as an example. You call your prospect list. You are lucky if you reach even 15% of the decision makers and you book an appointment with a small percentage of that group. And there you are on one side of that gaping marketing chasm with your little group of prospects. On the other side of the chasm are the majority of your prospects that you have not even started to communicate with. If you don’t communicate with them, they are going to remain on the other side of that chasm forever and you will never do any business with them.

Are you Giving Up On Your Prospects Too Soon?

One of the biggest mistakes we make in our marketing, in fact probably The biggest mistake, is to abandon our prospects too early in the marketing process. We get frustrated and give up on them. Then we move on to another group of prospects until we get frustrated with them. Meanwhile the group of prospects we abandoned is left hanging just when we were getting them warmed up to us.

Continue To Reach Out to Your Prospects on A Consistent Basis and They Will Cross Over the Bridge

E-Telemarketing is a dramatically different approach to marketing because it combines lead nurturing emails with telemarketing to build on successive contacts with your prospects. It is not a one call and out strategy which just does not work any more.

You communicate your message to your prospects consistently by email and then when you have identified which prospects have warmed up to you based on the number of times they have opened your emails, you call them. It stands to reason that you will have a lot more success calling prospects who have put up their hand and indicated their interest.