I was talking recently to a VP of Sales and Marketing for a small B2B company.  He was very open and very nice, so we had a good conversation.  His company is small enough that he handles everything that is sales and marketing related.  He makes cold calls, he makes sales presentations, he takes the orders, he creates and executes marketing campaigns.  He also frequently gets involved in the operational side of the business, particularly when there is an emergent need (sound familiar, sales people?).

At some point in the conversation it was appropriate for me to describe the sort of things we could do for an organization like his.  I told him about helping his website generate more leads.  I told him about creating an email campaign so that prospects would be more likely to agree to an appointment.  I told him about having our telemarketing team with email list building and setting up his appointments.

Initially, instead of being excited, he became uncomfortable.  To paraphrase, he confided in me, “That’s my job.  It sounds like you’re suggesting I go on vacation and give you a portion of my salary.  I don’t see how you’ll help my company without replacing me.”  Since that wasn’t our objective at all, I phrased our value proposition differently, “How many hours in a day do you spend talking to people who can say yes to giving you more business?”  As it turns out, he only has a couple appointments a week, and sometimes goes a couple of weeks without an appointment.  If with our help he could get to 1 appointment a day, then theoretically he would more than double his growth rate.  And it was clear he wasn’t going to get to an appointment a day by himself.

Whether you have a sales and marketing team of 1 or dozens of people, WealthNet can help you increase their effectiveness by getting you more appointments with warmer prospects.  We achieve our success through a multidisciplinary approach including telemarketing, email marketing, website marketing, and traditional marketing.  If you want tot talk to more people who can give you more business, we can help!

Do you have an appointment setting strategy that is working for you?  Do you need to recommit to those behaviors that are most effective?  Let us know what you’re thinking in the comments.