What is a Great Appointment Worth to You


by Dr. Gary S. Goodman - Date: 2007-01-16 - Word Count: 351 Share This!

I believe there is a niche for a a top tele-sales organization that can make these claims to prospective clients:

"We Fill Meeting Rooms With Precisely The Right People."

"We Set Appointments With Precisely The Right People."

I could use one right now to get me before people who can green-light on-site training & consulting programs.

Some perspective:

There is a rule of thumb, validated by behavioral research that says if you're a presenter, a marketer, a persuader, almost without fail the WRONG people will be in your audience.

If you want the Sr. VP of Operations or the COO, you'll get a telephone sales supervisor or a CSR that has been sent "as a scout," without authority or much gray matter.

Why? There is selective exposure to information and people notably avoid anything that smacks of what they think they already know or should know. Also, top people closely guard their time.

At a faculty dinner at UCLA Extension, where I've been teaching a "Building Your Consulting Business" class since '99, I asked some cohorts, who also consult, what a qualified appointment with a decision maker would be worth to them.

One said "$100" and the next, a former Xerox executive, shook his head and said: "No, it's worth at least $500."

What do YOU think a great appointment is worth?

What would you willingly pay to hook a high-level seminar participant who'd be happy to hear your pitch for upscale products or services?

I believe each outcome is worth a ton, but presently, we're not able to attract effective enough communicators to the tele-selling field in order to produce quality results.

More important, we're trying to use ever cheaper substitutes, working in call centers in India and elsewhere, who are next to useless when it comes to engaging senior executives in what one of my clients termed, "Meaningful Conversations."

Let's turn this around and do what Henry Ford did when he inaugurated the "Five dollar day," which was an unprecedented upgrading of the value of a factory job. By raising the stakes for quality phone folks, we just may be able to entice them to deliver what we need: first class appointments and sales!


Related Tags: keynote, consultant, speaker, telesales, usc, tele-sales, telemarketing, cold calling, appointment setting

Best-selling author of 12 books and more than 1,000 articles, Dr. Gary S. Goodman is considered "The Gold Standard" in sales development, customer service, and telephone effectiveness. Top-rated as a speaker, seminar leader, and consultant, his clients extend across the globe and the organizational spectrum, from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com. Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

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