If you want more sales appointments here’s a simple explanation of how to reframe your viewpoint so you can present a simple proposal that encourages prospects to respond.
I know not everyone has had the advantage of good sales training on making appointment calls. Self-employed people running their own business, and people who sell as only part of their role, may not have had access to effective courses.
I’ve also had many employed sellers and sales managers asking for ways to gain agreement to appointments that are easy to use because the corporate training they have received has been complicated, full of mnemonics, and doesn’t work outside of the classroom and unreal role-plays.
The training process I have used with the teams, individuals, sales managers, and trainers I have successfully helped to increase results begins with having a simple viewpoint.
Reframe How You Look at Your Appointment Call
When making appointment calls it’s important to start with a simple frame, a straightforward viewpoint with which you see the process of the call and what you should say to the prospect.
You’re not trying to trick or bully the prospect into a position where they agree to meet with you. If you do that they will just tell the receptionist to say they’re not available, or hide behind the furniture, when you turn up for the appointment.
20 years ago sales trainers and managers were telling their teams to view the cold call process as a long corridor that callers were taking the prospect down. The corridor had lots of doors down each side and the callers, with their slick techniques, were closing all the doors as the prospect reached them to prevent escape. The aim was to leave just the one door that led to the sales appointment open so the prospect had no other route to choose.
Sales people and appointment setters thought they had no alternative but to learn these escape preventing techniques. But if you have to do this then have you really targeted the right prospects, and will you be wasting your valuable selling time when you go to the appointment?
If you want more pre-qualified appointments that lead to closed sales then your viewpoint, the frame with which you see the situation, should be focused on a simple process of communicating the potential benefits of meeting with you to discuss what the prospect could gain from what you sell.
Keep it Simple to Gain More Sales Appointment
Remember the best piece of advice ever given in sales training: Keep it Simple!
Here’s a simple alternative frame with which to view your appointment calls.
Your viewpoint should be:
Your call is to propose to the prospect that you should meet so they can then make a decision on whether to buy from you based on the proposal that you present to them.
The prospect can’t make a decision on whether to buy from you now, and they can’t raise an objection, because they don’t yet have enough information.
By agreeing to meet with you they will only be committing their time to investigate further the potential benefits that they could gain.
There is no need for linguistic tricks or bullying, and there’s no need to wear the buyer down until they hang up the phone or surrender to your request and then probably don’t turn up for the meeting.
Just put this simple proposal to your prospects, in your own words, using the potential benefits of your products and services as a reason to talk further.
By taking this alternative viewpoint you have a logical reason as to why you could presume they will want to meet with you, which will help your confidence, and you are taking away from your prospect the burden of making a decision now. You will easily find the words you want to use to communicate this proposal to them, and it can all be done in a simple prospect friendly conversation.