The goal for a sales rep while conducting their outreach is to book a meeting with the prospect. The focus of todays article will be to leave you with a number of tips for you to try to increase your chances of booked meetings. Many tips can increase your chances of landing booked meetings.
# 1 Narrow Your Focus
Time is your most important resource, while you should always be targeting prospects within your defined buyer persona you can take this one step further. When engaging with your prospects, you should always find a way to evaluate which prospects seem to be most interested in your content. Most CRM systems today allow you to track who is engaging with your content sent through email. High engagement with an email can mean the prospect is at least curious about your content or they could be wondering exactly what it can do to help them. As a strategy, you should be targeting these prospects with more direct phone calls than your normal prospects for follow ups. These prospects are usually more willing to commit to a meeting if you can connect with them. A key to track or drive engagement is to have a link to an interesting article or location on your website that has useful information.
Tip 2: The Follow Up
The real leg work of booking meetings starts with your initial outreach to prospects, but the most difficult part will be the follow-ups. Most of the time, a prospect will not respond to your initial outreach. To get a response from a prospect it can normally take between 8-12 touch points between calls and emails. Your sales cadence will be your strategy for follow up with prospects and when to ultimately end the outreach. The goal of your follow-ups is not to repeat the same message over again, you should be providing additional value with each follow-up. You can do this by asking the prospect about their business or industry they are in. When you are following up by email, your subject line can be an effective way to get prospects’ attention. Executives can receive hundreds of emails a day, so having something that grabs their attention can give you an edge. For your subject line, try to keep it short and to the point, create a sense of urgency while also asking a direct question. For more tips on follow-ups, consider this article.
Tip 3: Handing Objections to Booking Meetings
Eventually, you will speak or interact with a prospect who gives a reason why they feel your solution will not be able to solve their pain point. The reason this could vary from price, they don’t understand the solution or are simply not convinced it can help them. The key to remember, is your are looking to provide solutions, not a sales pitch. You should provide your prospects with practical information that shows you understand their situation while also offering them solutions to potential problems. It is wise to prepare a list of common objections you hear from prospects that prevent them from learning more about your solution. Using your value proposition, prepare a response for different objection points. For example, they may mention they are currently busy and cannot consider the product or service you are proposing. You can ask if there is a date in the future that would be best for them. Be sure to update your list as you encounter new objections.
Tip 4: Try to Book Meetings Over the Phone Live
When you reach a prospect over the phone, you should try to qualify them as much as possible. If the prospect is committed to learning more about your solution, the next step is to book a meeting with them. You may want to try and get them to commit to a date and time while you have them on the phone. You should be patient with them while they confirm their schedule for an available time. Going back and forth on emails is a secondary option, but it often takes more time. This allows you to confirm that the prospect has you firmly in their schedule for the meeting.
Remember the goal of booking meetings isn’t to push prospects in speaking with you. The goal is to offer a solution to a problem they are experiencing and explore if you can help. If you need more help with booking meetings, you can reach out to me.
