If you are involved in making appointments for sales staff to meet with decision makers, you may have come across the following frustrations…

A person won’t make an appointment.
You have had your appointment rescheduled several times.
The staff won’t put you through to the decision-maker.
Your salesperson was stood up at the appointment.
The contact won’t return your phone call.

These events are signs that there are problems with the sales skills being used.

Q. Why can’t you set appointments?
A. You didn’t give them a good enough reason to say ‘yes’, so they convinced to make you accept ‘no’ as an answer. An appointment is the most important point of the sales process. If you don’t have a face-to-face or phone-to-phone appointment with a decision-maker, you can’t sell anything. You need to realise that a true appointment is when you meet with someone to develop the sales process, or someone who can make the sales decision.

Q. What do you have to do to improve your appointment uptake?
A. You need to speak to the decision maker and get them to commit to an appointment. Give them compelling reasons to say yes, don’t use ANY weak reasons or excuses. Don’t apologise for wanting to make an appointment. There are many settings in which you may make an appointment, but the basic premise is the same. You are not selling the product. You are not selling the service. You are selling the appointment. The product or service will be pitched during the appointment, not while you are making the appointment!

Q. How do you get an appointment?
A. You need to be thoroughly delightful! You must engage the person, be interesting, create desire, create value in the eyes of the person you are speaking to.

Making an appointment with a person who is willing requires no skill whatsoever.

This is about the people who perceive they’re not willing, that they have no interest. If a person has no interest, you will not make the appointment. If they can’t see the value, they will not agree to an appointment. If you are not engaging, you will not get an appointment.

Don’t be surprised when I say that to be good at making appointments, you need to put in some hard work. You need to gain expertise that extends beyond your brochure and your price list. Commit some TV time to becoming an expert in your field. You need to know how and where your customers use your product or service to help their business and make money.

You might even need to become an expert in branding, use of media, customer response, delayed response, public relations, publicity, converting inquiries to sales, image building and every other aspect customers are looking for as they plan their sales campaigns or their business ventures.

You can be sure you will not be trained on this in your job.

Take a hard look at the current brochure, what exactly do you think the customer will value in it? What will they see that will save them time, make them money or generally excite them?

First things first, you have to get the attention and interest of the decision-maker. You must engage him or her, use questions and statements that lead to them wanting to know more. And not necessarily more about you, but more about what you know that could help them.

You need to be prepared, and know about their company. You must be quick and to the point. You must be focused on just making the appointment.

You don’t need to ask meaningless questions, “How are you today?” or “Have you ever heard of us?”

You need to engage, quickly, skillfully. The meat of making an appointment is the engagement.

You must ask compelling and engaging questions.

One successful salesman I knew who sold lists of new corporations and homeowners would walk into a potential customer’s office and ask, “Who’s in charge of sales leads?” That question got him an appointment more than 50 percent of the time. If you are a printer or selling copiers, ask, “Who’s in charge of graphics?” If you are a banker or an accountant, ask, “Who’s in charge of profits?”

It’s very important that you tell the customer how he wins, or how he could win, by meeting with you.

You are not trying to save the prospect money; you must earn the prospect profit.

Only ask for a short time with the decision maker, you will have the option to make it longer if the prospect is interested.

Go as high up in the decision-making chain as you possibly can. If you think,  “I should go to the accounts department or the office manager?” - think higher! You should aim for the chief executive.

Be positive. Build a picture for them. Talk about profit and productivity, not saving money.

Do not waste the time of your prospect with irrelevant information. Prospects want answers, just as you do. They are giving up their valuable time, you need to talk about them, not about you.

Make sure every answer you give is a reason to meet, and the appointment is yours.