Appointment Setting Cold Calling Scripts to Grow Your Small Business Sales

Appointment setting cold calling scripts will help you to make sales appointments that will benefit your small business by using a sales appointment process as a base for your call. If you are making sales appointments for your business now and getting it wrong, it’s costing you time and money, and you’re missing out on potential new business. Many small business sales people use a cold calling script. Without good sales training many people trying to make sales appointments just aren’t effective. It isn’t their fault, small businesses, and self employed people that sell their own services, haven’t got the sales training resources that many large sales organisations have. Often they will use an appointment setting cold call script that has no process, no path to follow to get from a cold call introduction to agreeing the appointment. If you use an effective appointment setting process you can build your own words and phrases around that path. I’ve used this sales training technique with my sales team and seen their results multiply. You will have more selling opportunities and your small business will grow. Try out these simple sales training ideas and see the results for yourself. Not just the sales results but how you feel when you’re making the calls.nnAppointment setting introduction – Grab their attention You have to grab the prospect’s attention. Give them the possible benefits that they could gain. Use motivators that encourage them to continue talking to you. Small businesses have both an advantage and a disadvantage compared to the big well known companies when appointment setting. Your disadvantage against a big company is that the buyer recognizes the company because it has been well marketed. The prospect knows the company and may have information on what they can offer. They have seen or heard their adverts and marketing, and if the buyer has any interest in what this company sells they will listen. A small business making cold calls for sales appointments has to get more information into their cold calling scripts. Information such as; who you are, what you do, and the most important part of an appointment call, the reason for your call, should all be clearly communicated. Remember, the buyer has just picked up the phone. It will take time, a few seconds, for the information you give them to register. Help them out, make it easy for them, and give them some time. The advantage that a small business has is that they can quickly adapt and be flexible with what they can offer specific sales prospects. Small business sales operations can also target niche markets, and change to meet the market and customer demands and trends. Small business, or a self-employed person, selling their own products can make the calls more personal to each prospect. This personal touch can be a unique selling point something very valuable in marketing your small business. It makes you stand out from the competition. Motivate the buyer to answer your questions by using benefits Use phrases such as, ‘So I can see if you could benefit from this offer...’ How about being honest with your prospect. That will make a refreshing change. Tell them, ‘To make sure I am not wasting your time can I ask you...’ Make your appointment setting call a conversation. This is one of your big advantages as a small business as you are not confined to rigid cold calling scripts and company rules. nnnDon’t interrogate your potential customer Large scale sales appointment operations will have a tick list on screen of the information they need to ask a potential customer before making an appointment. The ones that use rigid scripts have set questions for the caller to ask. This can sound like an interrogation to the prospect. A technique, which I include on the sales training I present to my teams on how to build a cold calling script, is ask qualifying questions as part of a normal conversation. Simply note the information as you talk, and I mean talk, not interrogate the buyer. nnnJust talk to the prospect to gain the information you need In your cold calling script you have used benefits that the potential customer could gain from doing business with you. Now add some more, especially those specific and unique to doing business with your small business. You want to communicate messages that will influence, not manipulate, them to meet with you and discuss what they could gain. The prospect will only really know whether they could gain, or are missing out, when they have met you. When they have met you, and heard what you can give them, they are then in a position to decide if they want to buy. If a benefit you used earlier was well received and got a positive response, use it again when you try and gain agreement to an appointment. For example if protecting investments got a positive response use, ‘So that I can show you how I can protect your investment while still giving you a good return, are you available on Monday evening?’ If the buyer responded well when you said you had a special offer on at the moment you can use it with, So I can explain how you can get our special offer, are you free to meet Friday afte oon?’ Coat your request for an appointment in benefits. Ask a simple straight forward question, and give a potential benefit that the prospect could get from meeting with you.