The secret to a successful sale in the managed IT services business are the steps that lead up to it. You’ve already been hard at work sending out emails, newsletters, press releases and more. You’ve gone the full nine yards to ensure your brand is out there, but the phones aren’t ringing as much as you want them to and your inbox is dry. Now what?

Well, you still have another major step to complete, and that’s where marketing and sales meet—appointment setting.

An appointment setter’s primary responsibility is identifying prospective clients and setting up an appointment. This gives your sales professionals the opportunity to identify the prospect’s needs and goals and how you can help them. But, the job of an appointment setter isn’t an easy one. Many people think all callers are the same—but college interns and professional callers are different animals. When it comes to getting through the gatekeeper—you need a seasoned professional with the right skills.

Here are the three key responsibilities of successful appointment setters:

Create an Efficient and Qualified List—To ensure your callers are not wasting time scouting out unqualified leads, it’s important to purchase a good, accurate prospect list that’s filtered based on your business criteria (desired vertical market, gross yearly revenue, length of time in business, etc.). The caller’s job is to update the information for accuracy and completeness after the call—including important details, such as contract expiration dates—to significantly increase the success of future conversations.

Have a Call Script—Keep everyone on the same page by using a call script. Your callers need to know what to say and how to say it in order to deliver a consistent message. Plus, it’s important to make the benefits clear right up front to give them a good reason to take time out of their busy schedule. Appointment setters are essentially one of the first voices your potential clients hear, so it needs to make a positive impression.

Timing Is Everything—No one wants to be blasted by phone calls, and one call might not be enough. Rather than overwhelming your prospects with all the information about your services in a single call, schedule to distribute your calls at times that work best for your audience.

Don’t Have Enough Hands to Make the Calls? Outsource to Someone Who Does.

MSP maintain busy schedules, so carving out time to make phone calls and set appointments isn’t easy. Plus, there’s nothing worse than losing a potential lead due to a scheduling mix up.

Outsourcing appointment setting to an IT marketing agency like Marketopia is a great option. Think of what a relief it would be to know all your calls are set up and handled in a professional manner. Also, by leveraging our appointment center, more calls can be made, creating more new appointments.

Above all, you’ll have more time to focus on your servicing existing clients and calling on qualified prospects. Hunting down leads is stressful and time-consuming. Check out what Marketopia CEO Terry Hedden has to say about appointment setting in this August ChannelProNetwork article. Then contact us to see how outsourcing IT appointment setters can make better use of your sales resources and accelerate growth.

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Marketing is critical to your company’s continuous growth. But those in the tech space, such as engineers, often struggle when it comes to creating and implementing a successful marketing strategy. They expect and want guarantees, structure and immediate payback, but that’s not how marketing works. Engineers need to push that expectation aside and get down to the nitty-gritty, day-to-day activities while keeping a long-term conversion goal in mind.

Overcoming the Urge to Be Logical

Engineers struggle to understand marketing because it goes against their core training. They are focused on logic and look for guaranteed results—if you do X and Y then you get Z.

For formula-driven engineers, marketing has simple equations they can relate to:

More contacts = More leads
More appointment setters = More leads
More marketing activities = More leads

But unlike X+Y=Z, there isn’t a one-to-one correlation between every action and a defined result. Instead, marketing is an investment. You must invest in branding, create awareness, build trust, establish credibility and, over-time transform conversations into leads and, ultimately sales.

It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Sometimes you invest in marketing efforts that don’t deliver the first time around. According to Salesforce.com, it takes an average of six to eight touches to qualify a lead. In the early stages of the buyers’ journey, prospects are primarily gathering information. It takes time before they’re ready to ready out and connect with you directly. That means you may have to send an email or direct mail piece three for four times before you generate the number of leads you need. When it comes to marketing, intangibles come with the territory.

This is frustrating for everyone, but even more so for engineers. In its darkest hours, marketing feels like a waste of time—but the one sure way to make sure your marketing fails is to stop doing it. Every action you take increases the likelihood of success and moves you closer to a qualified prospect.

A Winning Formula: You + Marketopia = More Leads

It’s clear that marketing is a new mindset for engineers. That’s why outsourcing marketing to professionals is smart. Success doesn’t happen overnight and Marketopia educates companies to strategize and map out their success over the course of six to twelve months. The more you do—such as newsletters, email campaigns, blogs, direct mail and social media—the more touchpoints you create and the faster you’ll realize ROI. Marketing is a big job, but you don’t have to go it alone. Contact us today to learn how Marketopia can help you generate more leads and grow your business.

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