So here’s a big can of worms that I’m not afraid to open – What’s the difference between appointment setting and sales qualified leads? Well, here we go…
In outbound B2B lead generation, there are typically two ways that an organization’s sales team gets in front of its prospects: they’ve got themselves either an in-house team or a vendor supplying them with either appointments or qualified sales opportunities. The size and effectiveness of your sales team should play a factor as to which outbound effort you utilize. For example, 
is your sales organization comprised of those elite sales reps who can meet a prospect, even if by happenstance, and within moments build a rapport strong enough that the prospect feels connected? You know who I am talking about right? The sales rep who can qualify a prospect on the spot and thus bring them to the next stage of the sales cycle. It is these types of sales organizations that are very successful at making the most of their partnerships with appointment setting firms. A company with an extensive sales team can also do very well with appointment setting organizations, because the name of the game here is numbers. Although this approach can be expensive, the more meetings their large sales team has, the more likely they are to close some, right? So how does appointment setting differ from qualified sales opportunity generation?
A question of deliverables
With qualified sales leads, a series of qualification questions has been asked of the prospect, so much so that at the end of a teleprospecting call, the teleprospector can qualify that prospect as either in or out of the sales process. They’ve either met a set of criteria to be determined as “qualified” to sell to, or they have not. In contrast, an appointment, by definition, means “a meeting set for a specific time or place.” There is nothing quantitative about an appointment; it is what it is: a meeting with a contact.
Appointment setting services supply their clients with meetings from their clients’ marketing lists, but remember, that’s it. The difference between the appointment setting firm and an organization that supplies sales qualified leads is most drastic in its deliverables. With the appointment setting firm, you’re getting the appointment from your targeted list. With a company providing you with sales qualified leads, you’re getting, along with an appointment, information that puts your sales team that much closer to winning business. Now, that is not to say that the same thing cannot happen with appointment setting firms, because it can and it does. The difference here, though, is the information that gets transferred from the teleprospector to the sales rep via a sales qualified opportunity. Sure, you may have an appointment with a key C-level executive from one of your target companies that you’d like to sell to, but what else comes with that appointment?
The whole picture
Imagine, for a minute, that you’re staring at a big patch of the color green on a wall. As you take a few steps back and your eyes begin to focus, you realize that you’re looking at a painting. To me, that is the difference between the appointment setting firms and the ones that deliver fully qualified sales opportunities. You look at that green on the wall, and sure, it’s a great shade of green, one that you don’t mind looking at; however, when you step back and see the green along with the other colors of the spectrum in an entire painting, the artist’s choice to add the color green makes much more sense. If you’re the recipient, the appointment is great, especially because it comes from a list that you’ve probably generated, and, going back to my painting analogy, it’s also a really nice shade of green. The downside, however, is that that is all you have. If you’re the recipient of a qualified sales opportunity, you’ve got the entire picture to look at, and now that color green makes more sense because you see how it fits with the other colors. If we say that the color green is analogous to the contact of the appointment, the other colors within that painting, then, are analogous to all of the other factors within a qualified lead.
A lead that is deemed “qualified” puts in the hands of its recipient information about not only the appointment date and time, but about the contact’s situation. A sales qualified lead is fleshed out beyond the appointment in areas such as Business Pains, Timeframe to Purchase, Decision Making Process, and Budget. A sales qualified lead by its very nature implies that there is a potential to sell, and that it has been qualified against a set of criteria constructed by the organization receiving the lead. The fully qualified sales opportunity brings with it all of the background information that is pertinent to having a more strategic sales meeting. Is it great to get the appointment? Absolutely. But, what if that appointment had with it information about the contact’s issues with their current process, or information about how that contact goes about deciding on technology/services spending, or even puts into view the decision making process of the organization to evaluate new technology /services? When you are able to arm your sales team with information like that, you put in their hands the ability to close opportunities exponentially faster. Closing business faster means having more time to close more business faster which means…well, you get the picture, right?
As I said above, if you’ve got that choice sales team that closes deals during an initial meeting, it’s quite possible that appointment setting firms are all you need to make your sales force even more successful. Conversely, if you find that your sales team doesn’t fit that bill, it probably would make more sense to work with an organization that can supply sales qualified leads, bringing your sales team that much closer to closing the opportunities presented them.
Did you scan this story? Here are some key points to take away:
- Consider the size and effectiveness of your sales team when determining which outbound effort you should utilize: appointment setting or sales qualified leads.
- Unless your sales organization is huge and/or extremely talented and effective, you may benefit more from qualified sales opportunities than from appointment setting.
- Appointment setting may deliver a larger quantity of contacts/appointments, but qualified sales opportunities deliver more information about each contact, giving you a more complete picture of the prospect’s needs and requirements.
- The fully qualified sales opportunity brings with it all of the background information conducive to a more strategic sales meeting.
About The B2Bblogger: Chris Snell is Director, Corporate Marketing for AG Salesworks, a teleprospecting and marketing services organization. Chris has spent the last decade generating and managing teams that have generated millions of dollars in closed business for his clients. Currently, Chris is responsible for all aspects of marketing, including online marketing, marketing communications, and product marketing. Follow him on Twitter, or at his blog The CRAP Report.
