“The ask” is the climactic moment of most lead generation conversations. Whether your goal is to set an appointment, fill seats at a webinar, or show a demo to interested prospects, the door that opens for your sales team hinges on that initial “yes”.
However, just getting a yes doesn’t mean your work is done—far from it, in fact. If the prospect either doesn’t show up for or doesn’t understand the purpose of the appointment you’ve set with them, all the hard work of procuring their initial commitment will be for naught.
That’s why the best lead gen organizations don’t just focus on appointment setting, but also design impactful calls to action that are more likely to keep prospects informed, excited, and engaged during the crucial period of time between the cold call and the meeting.
Some of these strategies utilize the latest, most cutting-edge technology; others are rhetorical strategies honed by trial and error over hours and hours of cold calling. Based on the two decades’ worth of data we’ve gathered from working with clients, here are a few that we’ve found particularly effective:
1. “Wrap” each conversation with a few insightful questions. Immediately after scheduling an appointment—or even while scheduling it—take a few moments to get to know your prospect a little bit better. What is it about your service that they’re particularly curious about? Do they or their organization face any specific challenges or have any pressing concerns?
A Discovery Call is a two-way street, and it’s important that all of your prospects feel listened to and empowered to help set the agenda. By setting a collaborative tone from the outset, you can ensure that every party feels a sense of ownership over the appointment.
2. Send confirmation emails—to everyone. Here’s one of those tricks that’s so simple it seems obvious: send the same exact confirmation email to everyone—on both your team and your prospect’s—who is likely to participate in the discovery meeting. This eliminates any possibility of confusion or miscommunication about when and where the meeting will take place. It also opens a direct line of communication between both parties, allowing your BDRs to step out and your sales reps to take it from there. The sales conversation might even begin informally before the scheduled meeting!
3. Develop a specific, attention-grabbing landing page that can be linked to in all of your copy. A great landing page provides a focused, concise experience. It can increase your prospects’ interest in the product or service you’re promoting or even allow them to take an action, such as viewing a demo, signing up for a free trial, or self-scheduling an appointment.
Sophisticated lead generation firms such as VSA are increasingly utilizing landing page design services that allow clients to develop branded, campaign-specific content to complement their outbound calling activities. We’re discovering that a well-designed landing page can greatly improve the quality of a first meeting.
4. Use automated tools to streamline scheduling and eliminate confusion. The back-and-forth of scheduling can sometimes lead to dropped appointments. That’s why more and more of VSA’s clients are using better scheduling tools to make the process as seamless as possible. Some, like Calendly, allow the BDR to set up a meeting with a single click—or even enable the prospect to do it themselves. This might seem like a small improvement, but it can make a big difference!
5. Give reminder calls or messages. It might seem old-fashioned, but the person-to-person connection of a simple reminder call is still one of the best ways to ensure that your prospect won’t miss a meeting. A quick, simple reminder call re-engages the prospect so that they’ll be more focused on having a good conversation when the appointment occurs. Of course, this tactic takes additional time and may not fit every program.
Setting an appointment is the main goal of most cold calls—and one that today’s lead gen teams have to be increasingly savvy in order to achieve. However, the actual quality of a call to action is at least as important as the process of getting there. Whether or not your prospects will actually show up to the meeting—let alone turn out to be enthusiastic, interested, and well qualified—can be difficult to control or predict.
Fortunately, there are many strategies out there for significantly improving these metrics. VSA utilizes as many as possible on behalf of our clients, and have found the five discussed in this article to be particularly effective.
We’re happy to discuss further—and interested in hearing what works for your team! Just set up an appointment with us. We promise we’ll show up.
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