Every company goes through processes and reaches important milestones as they grow. The first ones are always the ones easily remembered – your first sale, the first employee you hire, the first repeat client you get, and so forth. But often, as a company grows, you stop keeping track of such achievements. For example, do you know when it got to the point where you are getting too many calls for support requests that your internal team can hardly manage? Probably not.
When you reach such growth, it’s time to consider boosting your operational readiness to match your business needs. It doesn’t matter if you are a huge corporation or a startup. If you want to consider business outsourcing services, you certainly can. In fact, as soon as you feel like there is a struggle to find cost-effective customer support, outsourcing is an excellent solution to explore. Outsourcing can help you focus your attention and resources on the services or the products that your company offers.
In this post, however, we are going to focus on outsourcing appointment setting, which is considered one of the most challenging parts of any business development and is a common barrier in its growth. After all, it will be hard to make a sale without directly speaking to a prospective buyer or client first. So, what is an appointment setting, and why should you outsource it? Read on and find out:
What Appointment Setting Is
Appointment setting is a critical task wherein a business makes a first impression on a prospect through any communication means to get the prospect’s attention. The goal is to make enough impact that the prospect will agree to speak again or meet to further discuss a potential deal or sales.
What Appointment Setters Do
Based on the explanation of what the task of appointment setting entails, you can probably guess what appointment setters do. To achieve their goal, appointment setters first need to contact potential customers or clients and introduce them to the company. They need to discuss the services or products the company offers. In a nutshell, it’s a marketing task, so the appointment setter must be well-versed about the company they represent and the products or services provided.
Appointment setters do get a contact sheet where they’ll find the information they need, mainly on the prospects they’d be calling. That said, it’s still necessary for appointment setters to be technical and accurate with what they do. They should also have sufficient skills in using computers, record-keeping, and speaking on the phone with etiquette. Appointment setters should be dedicated because the more appointments they successfully set, the more sales opportunities there are for the business.
How Appointment Setting Center Outsourcing Works
Similar to most contact centers, appointment setting centers minimize the organization’s expenses while maximizing profits and ensuring customer satisfaction. But first, you need to choose a reliable outsourcer that can provide the needs of your company. Once you find one, the appointment setters will be trained to gain more knowledge about the company and the products to be sold.
Why You Should Consider Outsourcing Appointment Setting
If you are already outsourcing the sales or technical support, you might be wondering if there’s a need for an additional team dedicated to appointment setting. The answer is yes. For one, the sales team should be able to focus on closing sales because that’s what they should be doing. If they are handling cold calls as well, you can’t expect them to deliver a high number of sales.
So if your sales team is currently spending more time doing appointment setting, you should seriously consider outsourcing it. Aside from that, here are some of the reasons you should outsource appointment setting:
You Free Up Time
Your sales representatives have eight hours a day to do their job. This is more than enough time to close sales unless a considerable chunk of it is spent on appointment setting. When you outsource appointment setting, you free up time for your sales team to do what they’re there to do.
You Can Save Some Money
If you are going to have an in-house appointment setting team, that’s going to require a manager, a trainer, not to mention office space, and all the equipment. Just the cost of training new employees can be very expensive. All these can mount up, so it’s more economical to work with an outsourcing company with a team ready to do the job, with their manager, and all their own equipment so you wouldn’t have to worry about these things.
It Can Help Deliver Higher Quality of Service
One of the most significant benefits of outsourcing appointment setting is that you are getting the services of an already qualified team with skills that are primarily focused on the task you need them to do. That is because contact centers have their employees undergo strict training programs before they are assigned to a client or account. You might not have the same level of expertise with an in-house team.
You Can Get Results Faster
If you are going to do your appointment setting internally, you may have to wait for months to find the right employees for the job. Then you’ll have to spend a couple more months training them to the standards that you want. That means you could be waiting up to a year or so to actually see the results of their work. Even your objective to grow your sales and expand through that could be compromised. Outsourcing speeds up the entire process so you can enjoy the results of the work of a highly-trained team of appointment setters. You can also be sure that you’ll get a regular report from your outsourcing partner so you can track the progress they are making.
Conclusion
If you are looking to hire appointment setters anyway, you should consider outsourcing them. With all the benefits discussed above, there is no reason for you to do otherwise. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big conglomerate or a startup – you can gain from outsourcing appointment setting. The key, though, is finding the right outsourcing partner to help you out.
CrewBloom can help you find the best appointment setters in the Philippines. No matter what industry you might be in, we can help get you a team of highly trained professionals who can help your business grow. Contact us today to know more!
