I heard another tale of woe last week from a salesperson that had travelled half the length of the country to meet a prospect, only to find that the person they were meeting wasn’t actually in the office that day. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I have heard such a story, far from it, it happens far too often. I even heard of a salesperson that travelled half a day for a meeting with a sales lead only to find that the prospect wasn’t even based at that office!
Why Appointment Setting Drives the Wrong Behaviour
Whilst these trips with no one to meet are a clearly a waste of the salespersons valuable time, it’s actually slightly less time consuming that meeting with a prospect that hasn’t been well qualified, where no opportunity exists currently or is likely to in the foreseeable future. This happens far too often, particularly in organisations that measure activity, e.g. the number of sales appointments, rather than more meaningful metrics.
I often have conversations with sales directors who tell me that they believe appointment setting is a vital function for their sales team.
I politely tell them that I don’t believe that this is what they really want at all. What they want is more qualified opportunities for their salespeople to work on. The trouble with appointments is that they can be set with people with no authority, budget or need. There are plenty of people out there who will meet with salespeople for a whole host of reasons, sometimes just to get that persistent appointment setter of their backs, but they never were nor will be a good prospect.
Sales directors have also told me that this is one of the reasons why they make their salespeople responsible for generating their own leads and sales appointments. I happen to think this sales model is fundamentally flawed and it doesn’t actually solve the problem most of the time either.
The salesperson, who hates prospecting anyway, will often take the meeting to get away from prospecting for half a day or to meet their weekly appointment target.
I highly recommend that someone other than your salespeople generate leads and develop opportunities for your sales people to pursue.
However, the handover is all important and a salesperson should take a meeting with a prospect until they have personally re-qualified the opportunity. In addition, you should insist that a simple qualification checklist is completed by the salesperson before they attend a meeting with a new prospect. I know this goes against the grain for many because they see it as a relationship building exercise which might not have immediate pay back but could be useful for the future.
It might but that’s not going to deliver the next quarter’s sales target so one to nurture, not to meet.
Most sales directors I talk to will agree that it’s about quality, not quantity.
They agree that they would rather have fewer, better qualified meetings. Yet, some still want to set targets for the number of appointments that we set. I’m all for setting targets but they should be focussed on discovery calls and conversations, qualified opportunities and closed business.
If you choose to outsource lead generation and opportunity development, I would strongly advise against working with appointment setters. Their consultants will be rewarded on the number of appointments they set for your salespeople and this will inevitably drive the wrong behaviour.
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