Appointment setting is one of the most overlooked processes in sales.
Most companies simply dump it on the sales team’s desk for them to do on top of their regular job (which is closing deals).
But doing this is a huge mistake.
Appointments are a critical cog in the business development machine. They’re the input that eventually turns into sales. And if you lack consistency or quality, your sales will suffer.
So you need to approach your appointment setting with the same degree of intentionality you approach your sales process with.
And since this is a time-consuming process, many companies decide to turn to outsourced appointment setting.
But can that actually work?
Do these companies get you good appointments or a bunch of bogus calls that waste your sales team’s time?
I’ll answer these questions and more in this post so you can decide for yourself whether outsourcing appointment setting is a legit option for your company.
What Exactly Do Appointment Setters Do?
An appointment setter is responsible for making contact with potential customers and scheduling appointments for sales representatives to meet with them.
They do all the legwork on the front end of the business development process, including:
- Identifying warm prospects (people who’ve interacted with a company’s sales team or marketing material already)
- Creating contact lists with key details about each person’s specific situation
- Reaching out to prospects to connect with them and learn about their needs
- Booking sales appointments with as many quality prospects as possible
Their ultimate goal is to book as many quality sales appointments as they possibly can.
This is a critical part of the sales process, which is why many companies think this should be part of the sales reps’ job descriptions.
But appointment setting requires a slightly different skillset and is a full-time job in and of itself.
And that’s why outsourcing it or building an in-house team are much better alternatives.
3 Benefits of Outsourcing Appointment Setting
1. Increased productivity.
As we just talked about, appointment setting is time-consuming and requires a slightly different (but complementary) skillset than traditional sales.
That’s why outsourcing this part of the sales process can instantly and exponentially increase your sales team’s productivity.
When you work with a company that knows your industry, you can quickly get them into the fold and start generating daily sales appointments.
This enables your sales team to focus on their main goal…generating sales.
2. Lower costs.
Hiring in-house appointment setters can get expensive fast when done poorly.
You have to give them extensive training on your:
- Industry (if they don’t already have specific experience)
- Business (they need to know your products and services incredibly well)
- Systems (your CRMs, communication tools, and more)
- Processes (you not only have to have a process in place for setters, but you have to train each person on that process)
And that doesn’t even include the time it takes to recruit A-players and managing a team of setters (which might not be an issue if you’re working with a company like ours that actually recruits, trains, and manages closers and setters for you).
But outsourcing companies, on the other hand, already have trained staff members who know how to use various CRM systems and can start working immediately.
You don’t have to manage them as closely and they bill hourly so you avoid having to pay salaries and benefits.
And each of these benefits can result in drastically lower costs and better ROI (discussed below).
3. Better results.
Appointment setting companies can often get better results because they simply have more experience and resources.
All they do day in and day out is book sales appointments—and they have experience in various industries.
And this means a good company can be more:
- Flexible – a team of setters can reply to prospects faster and better accommodate their desired appointment times.
- Effective – they have proven processes their team of setters will use to book more appointments faster.
3 Massive Downsides of Outsourced Appointment Setting You Can’t Afford to Overlook
While outsourced appointment setting definitely has its perks, it has 2 MASSIVE downsides you can’t ignore.
In certain situations, they can make outsourcing a losing proposition for your business.
1. The company or setters could leave at any time.
Outsourced setters are hired guns. The company you’re working with could leave at any time for any reason.
And you’d be left high and dry.
Having an in-house team protects you against the potential of losing your entire team of setters overnight.
2. They don’t answer to you.
When outsourcing, the setters you work with answer ultimately to the company you hired, not you.
This can cause issues because you aren’t able to coach, correct, and challenge outsourced setters like you are if you have an in-house team.
Any issues are handled by the company you hired–adding an additional and often unnecessary middleman in the chain of command.
3. They won’t be invested.
Outsourced setters aren’t incentivized to care about your business the same way in-house setters would be.
They get paid by the company you hired and you have no control over their incentives, quotas, and more.
This means they are likely to care substantially less about learning the ins and outs of your business, your business’s general growth, and whether the appointments they’re setting are actually good.
The Powerful Alternative to Outsourced Appointment Setting
What if you could build an in-house team of top 1% appointment setters without having to recruit or train them yourself?
That way, you could have the best of both in-house and outsourced appointment setting:
- An invested in-house team who answers to you that you don’t have to invest thousands of dollars to train… only to find out they can’t perform
- A team of top 1% setters who take the stress of appointment setting off your sales team so they can focus on closing
- A steady stream of qualified appointments hitting your sales team’s calendars
- And much more
That’s what we offer at Closers.io.
We have a roster of highly trained setters and closers that we can insert into your team and train using our proven methodologies.
That way, you can outsource the most frustrating and time-consuming part of the process (finding, vetting, and hiring top 1% sales reps) and then still reap the benefits of a high performing in-house sales team.
All the setters and closers are YOUR employees and we don’t take any commissions on their sales.
Sound interesting?
Click here to schedule a call to see specifically how we can build your sales team.