How to get more appointments in sales: Guide for sales reps

Sales reps naturally have 2 states: chasing their quota or itching to set a new record after hitting it. 

No wonder. In sales appointment setting, more quality appointments equals more money. Ka-ching! And vice versa, when your calendar has gaping holes and the prospects who do show up are not buying, it takes an effort to stay positive.

Whatever your situation, the sales appointment setting tips from Belkins’ top SDRs will help you. Let’s see how to book more sales appointments for your pipeline and make you all perky and confident — like a salesperson should be. 

Proven tactics and tips to secure appointments in sales

By "proven" here, we mean the tactics that Belkins’ own top sales reps have been using to book 34 appointments in 2 months for a health app or drive $4.9 million worth of deals for a retail agency.

Here’s their step-by-step advice on how to set sales appointments effectively: 

1. Set measurable and realistic goals to book more appointments

Before you focus on setting more appointments, you have to ensure that the prospects you’re pursuing are good fits. The point is that you need to go for more qualified, quality sales appointments. Then you can nail down exactly how many more you need.

We advise that you read our article on appointment setting goals. Here is an excerpt for examples of good and bad goals:

The good examples focus on quality and come from historical data and company values. You may aim for improvements compared to the last quarter or year to create realistic goals. Another good criterion to factor in is making sure appointments are set with the ideal customer profile (ICP) only and are qualified for your specific business.

After you’ve set your goals and decided what kind of appointments you’re after, you can then implement tactics to get more of them. 

2. Craft outreach campaigns that resonate

Whether you prefer setting sales appointments over the phone or using a multitouch, omnichannel approach, planning a proper outreach campaign will involve several basic steps.

Segment your audience to personalize outreach

By understanding each segment’s day-to-day needs and preferences, you can deliver highly personalized messages and make people listen.   

Segmentation strategies include:

1. Demographic (by industry, company size, job title, location)   
2. Firmographic (by revenue, growth stage, and technology adoption rates)
3. Behavioral (by website behavior, email engagement, social media activity)
4. Psychographic (by values, lifestyle, and personality traits influencing buying decisions)

Use multiple segmentation criteria to create highly targeted segments. For example:

Now, create your messaging to meet them at the right place. Send the former a message on LinkedIn proposing to meet at the next event, and drop the latter an email with a number-proven value prop fine-tuned for their company.  

Use A/B testing for continual improvement

Experimenting with different variations of your sales outreach materials helps you find the right words to appeal to your potential buyers. We at Belkins never stop testing campaign elements — we see each 0.1% improvement as a crucial stepping stone to the highest possible conversion rates. 

There are tons of parameters you can A/B test; we’ve gathered some of our go-tos below. 

Email A/B testing:

1. Subject line lengths, styles, levels of urgency
2. Personalized subject lines versus generic ones
3. Power words and numbers in the subject line
4. Lengths and formats of body copy (plain text vs. HTML)
5. Calls to action (CTAs)
6. Value propositions
7. Email timing (days of the week and times of day)

LinkedIn connection invitation A/B testing:

1. Personalized messages versus generic ones
2. Different CTAs ("Let’s connect," "I’d love to hear about your goals," etc.)
3. Referencing mutual connections versus not

Call script A/B testing:

1. Opening lines to capture attention
2. Ways of articulating your value proposition
3. Techniques for handling objections
4. Shorter vs. longer call durations 

How to set up the A/B testing process to be quick and efficient? First, test only 1 variable at a time. Second, track open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates every time. Third, use a large enough sample audience to get statistically significant results. 

Improving your metrics across the board will automatically result in setting more sales appointments.  

Look for buying signals

Buying signals indicate that a prospect is interested in your product or service. Learn to promptly identify and respond to these signals to accelerate your appointment setting process.

For example, you find out that company A always picks the venue for their annual team-building in the first week of October. So, you pitch your space to them in mid-September and push for a demo call on October 1st. Also, you do not waste time pitching your business to them in April.  

But where do you get these buying signals from? We recommend monitoring your website and CRM, industry media, and social media to find signals from the list below. 

Digital footprints and direct engagement signals:

• Spending extra time on service pages on your website
• Heat maps showing attention to certain areas of your website
• Downloading whitepapers and e-books and reading case studies
• Attending your webinars or virtual events
• Liking, commenting, and sharing your social media posts
• Opens and click-throughs on your emails
• Meeting requests (the strongest buying signal)
• Inquiries about pricing, features, or demos

Buying signals on social media and indirect signals:

• Profile views on LinkedIn 
• Responses to your InMail messages
• Mentions of your brand or industry on X, Facebook, or TikTok
• Likes, reposts, and replies
• New job postings (signal a company’s growth plans)
• Impactful industry news and trends 
• Potential threats from competitors’ activities

Buying signals in CRM:

• Recent engagement with the sales team
• Position on the bottom-of-funnel deal stages
• High-paying customers
• High probability of recurring purchase

Prioritize your outreach efforts on prospects showing buying signals and use them to personalize your messaging ("Hey, it looks like it’s almost time to reorder your package," "Hi, do you know that your biggest competitor just installed a new ERP?"). 

For example, here is how you can implement demonstrated hiring intent into your cold email:

Follow outbound outreach best practices

Outbound outreach is our forte at Belkins. Check out our top-rated blog posts on outbound appointment setting in sales: 

1. B2B appointment-setting tips
2. How to generate outbound leads in B2B
3. State of outbound appointment setting: Trends and predictions
4. How to improve appointment rate in B2B sales

On the same note, here’s a brief summary of the best appointment setting techniques for sales reps and sales managers:

Cold email appointment scheduling

1. Hook your prospects with the right subject line 

A good subject line should encourage recipients to click and read your message. Avoid spammy-looking subject lines that can plummet your open and reply rates.

The worst words for subject lines, according to a recent Reply study, are click, get, question, save, intro, improve, increase, and scale.

They also shared some of their best-performing templates: 

Klenty analyzed 200,000 cold emails and found these jaw-dropping patterns:

• Subject lines (SL) with numbers hit 20% open rate on average compared to 12% without.
• SL with a question mark displays the same results, 20% and 12%.
• SL with the prospect’s name achieves a 39% open rate.
• One-word subject lines hit a 34.47% reply rate.

At Belkins, top-performing subject lines reach as high as 80% open rate. Our top examples include:

F2F meetings invitations:

• Heading to {{City}}, meet soon?
• {{First_Name}}, coffee next week?
• Just landed in {{City}}, {{First_Name}}

Referral approach:

• You or {{Referral_Name}}
• Should I contact you or {{Referral_Name}}

Value focus approach:

• IT services cost cut at {{Company}}
• Pending membership opening at {{Company}}
• Cut {{Company}}’s electric bill to zero

The secret to a good subject line lies in detailed prospect research. So first, do the legwork to understand your prospects’ pain points. Then use the insights to personalize your email’s subject lines and body.

2. Start strong with a compelling opening sentence

You’ve nailed the subject line, and they’ve opened your email. Great! Don’t spoil it with "I hope this finds you well." A good opening phrase is key for reading your whole email. Try these approaches: 

• Mention a referral or a shared contact.
• Compliment their recent post, award, or achievement.
• Catch them off-guard with a witty one: "Sorry for ruining your cleared inbox, but…" 
• Jump to the problem you solve: "73 companies will go broke this year because of customer lawsuits."

Avoid using fluff or jargon in your opening. Obvious statements like "I am writing to let you know about…" steal your prospect’s time and don’t tell them anything new. Cut to the chase. 

3. Articulate the value you can provide to the prospect

Several formulas help put together your company value proposition, such as: 

This is good, but be very explicit about what you do. Also, include numbers to give your value a solid backdrop:

This version is better than the first, but it’s all about you. What about your prospect? 

To fine-tune your value prop further, consider the specific pains and behaviors of the audience segment you’re trying to reach. For example, CEOs think about goals like company revenue growth, while CMOs prioritize cutting customer acquisition costs. 

Hence, you can tweak it like this:

Now that your prospect knows what’s in it for them, leverage their curiosity and proceed to sales appointment scheduling.

4. Encourage the prospect to take action

End your email with a clear call-to-action, making it easy to reply. 

If you aim to set a meeting, briefly lay out the agenda, propose 1–2 time slots, and ask which one is more convenient. Avoid suggesting slots that are too soon or too far in the future (e.g., "today" or "in 2 weeks").

Belkins SDRs recommend taking it further and sending a Calendly link as a CTA — this way prospects can book the best time right away.

If you are getting silence, consider using this gimmick in your follow-up emails: 

This might trigger a short yet meaningful reply to work with. 

Over-the-phone appointment scheduling

Setting sales appointments over the phone remains among the most effective tactics even in our fully digitalized world. So pick up that headset, ring your prospect, and use all your charisma to get people to say "yes." 

Here are our best tips on how to set appointments over the phone:

1. Craft a compelling script

We recommend treating your script as a flexible road map. Start with how your solution will help them beat competitors or solve a challenge. Prospects will have questions and objections, so create a list of counterarguments and tangible evidence to have on hand.

A good structure for the script:

• Hook: a thought-provoking question, a surprising statistic, or a relevant reference
• Value proposition: specific benefit of your product or service, with numbers 
• Social proof: relevant experience or successful case studies in the prospect’s vertical
• Call to action: directive to book a demo meeting, ideally proposing 2 specific time slots

Use a tone that acknowledges your prospect’s expertise and positions you as a peer. Avoid condescending or overly simplistic language. 

2. Don’t overthink the initial contact

True confidence will come with experience, so don’t fret and push through the first hundred calls. With each try, you will get a better feel for your script, your prospects, and how to tweak your approach for the best results.  

To add to your self-assurance, stick to these best practices: 

• Speak clearly and maintain a professional yet friendly tone.
• If you encounter a gatekeeper, try to enlist their help. For example: "Hi, [Gatekeeper Name], I’m [Your Name] from [Your Company]. I’d like to schedule a brief conversation with [Prospect Name] to discuss [brief, compelling reason]. Could you please tell me the best way to reach them or the best time to call back?"
• If you reach voicemail, leave a clear, short message ending with your phone number, then follow it up with an email.

3. Follow up, and then follow up some more

According to Cognism research, 3 cold call attempts give you the best chance of connecting with a lead.

That’s a great reason to be diligent when working on your database. 

When you’ve reached your prospect and had an initial talk, whether it resulted in a meeting or not, a good practice is to follow up with an email. Summarize your pitch and address any specifics you’d touched in a call. 

Here is how you can take follow-ups further from there: 

• Mix up your methods. After a call and a personalized email, connect with them on LinkedIn, and later share a relevant industry article.
• Don’t just ask for a meeting repeatedly. Provide new, valuable insights with each follow-up. 
• Space out your follow-ups strategically. A good rule of thumb is to follow up within 24 hours of the initial call, then again a few days later, and finally, after a week.

Omnichannel approach

Unfortunately, relying solely on email outreach and cold calls as appointment setting tactics became ineffective with the rise of spam filters and new, stricter privacy policies. Platforms like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and AI-powered tools have made B2B appointment setting tougher, as prospects are bombarded with dozens of messages every day. 

To succeed in this new environment, we at Belkins use an omnichannel approach. 

Omnichannel means intertwined outreach efforts across multiple aligned channels — email, phone calls, LinkedIn, and even messaging apps. 

Unlike simple replication of the message across platforms, the omnichannel approach requires crafting unique content for each channel to create the best prospect experience. You may use LinkedIn for initial connection, email for delivering value prop, and phone calls to secure the appointment. 

An omnichannel appointment setting campaign lets you make the most of each channel’s strengths, optimize your team’s efforts, and set more sales appointments.

🎥 Further watching: Belkins’ webinar on the omnichannel approach.

Collaborate with your marketing team

This advanced tactic is a game-changer in getting more high-value bookings and winning dream clients. What’s in it exactly?

Andy Crestodina’s approach to account-based content marketing is a fantastic example of sales and marketing alignment. By working together, the sales and marketing teams created original research that directly addresses the needs of specific high-value accounts.

Next, Orbit Media developed a list of top-tier prospects and invited them to a webinar to discuss fresh findings and solutions.

The returns? The revenue impact made up $169,000 (2 projects won) and 8 qualified leads with the investment of 30 hours and $1,000 for paid ads.

The point is: Don’t sell mere calls — show value first. To do this, utilize marketing materials like whitepapers, e-books, and case studies to pique prospects’ interest in the appointments you’re proposing.

It goes hand in hand with the omnichannel approach, too. Interactions with marketing content can and should be linked to sales interactions. For example, when booking a call, consider whether the prospect clicked on an ad, is a regular visitor to the website, or attended your webinars, and use this knowledge for better message personalization. 

Leverage case studies and social proof

How to generate sales appointments with new clients? Leverage the clients you already have! We are not talking about referrals here but rather about turning your successful cases into social proof to use in pitches. 

Here’s how to turn a project into a case study: 

1. Quantify your results. Numbers work! Tell how your product or service has helped your clients increase efficiency, reduce costs, or grow revenue — all by a specific percentage.  
2. Get testimonials, preferably in video form, from satisfied customers. Firsthand accounts resonate with prospects better than generic claims.
3. Be genuine and specific. Build trust by telling about your challenges and how you overcame them. 

Share the case studies across multiple channels, including your website, marketing materials, and social media. Use them in your follow-ups to convince on-the-fence prospects and attract more sales appointments.

Enable social selling

Social selling lays the foundation before cold pitching and eases cold appointment setting. Here are some actionable tips to make it work for you:

• Choose the social media platform where your target audience spends the most time (e.g., LinkedIn for B2B sales).
• Interact with your ideal prospects in the comments or industry-specific groups to establish your presence and credibility.
• Put out informative and engaging content that addresses the needs of your target audience. Share your accomplishments, challenges, and tactics. Be authentic to attract more eyeballs.
• Reach out to prospects and start building relationships by offering insights, sharing valuable content in DMs, or initiating meaningful conversations — no direct sales. Just establish rapport.

Over time, create a list of warmed-up prospects and send personalized sales emails to get appointments with them.

Apply communication techniques

Decision-makers appreciate being heard and value good communication. In an appointment setting sales call, be authentic, ask the right questions, and listen. Active listening shows respect and allows you to identify the true needs prospects may not explicitly state: 

• Use pauses to allow your prospect to articulate their thoughts. Reflect their words to them ("So, if I understand correctly, your primary challenge is...") to build rapport and show your engagement.
• Subtly mirror your prospect’s body language and communication style, such as pace, tone, vocabulary, etc. This fosters a sense of trust.
• Try using the "but you are free" technique, a nudge-to-comply gimmick based on semantic evocation of freedom. For example, "I understand you’re incredibly busy, but you are free to choose a time that best suits your schedule. Would Tuesday afternoon or Thursday morning work better?" You acknowledge their time constraints, yet empower them to make a choice.
• The pyramid principle is another good technique for structuring communication. Open with the key takeaway — this will probably be your value proposition — then follow with persuasive arguments and proof. This will cater to the decision-makers’ habit of working with concise, impactful information.

Finally, follow business etiquette, and remember you are taking someone’s valuable time. Recognize cues to wrap up the conversation, and always thank them for their involvement. 

Be prepared to handle objections

This is an inevitable part of appointment scheduling for sales managers, so instead of waiting for the prospects to name the objections, address their potential concerns head on. 

For example, "Now, you might be thinking [common objection], and here’s why that’s not a concern..." This way you show that you understand the perspective and have thought your solution through.

• A very effective technique is the 5 Whys. It’s as simple as it sounds — ask "why" repeatedly to get to the root cause of their objection. 
• The Feel, Felt, Found method lets you naturally go from objection to social proof in your pitch. For example: "I understand how you feel. Many of our clients felt the same way initially. However, they found that… [social proof]." 
• One more tactic is reframing, or shifting the attention from objection to the cost of inaction. For example: "Yes, the initial price may seem hefty, but consider the potential losses you’ll face by not addressing this issue..."

As soon as you feel you’re past the objections, go for the final push and schedule that meeting. 

Schedule strategically

When your prospect agrees to hear more, schedule the meeting without further ado. We recommend suggesting at least a 30-minute slot for this because when you ask for 15–20 minutes, you make it sound like your service is not that important. 

Suggest 1–2 time slots for them to choose from. If it suits your organization’s processes, try proposing dedicated "blocks" for meetings, such as Tuesday mornings or Thursday afternoons, instead of specific times.  

Use automation and tools

Most of the laborious and mundane appointment setting tasks are now subject to automation. To ensure frictionless campaigns and shorter outreach cycles, employ appointment setting tools to fasten up these operations:

• Prospecting
• Buying intent research
• Draft copywriting
• Contact scraping
• Bulk personalization
• Follow-ups
• Appointment booking
• Reporting

Automation helps increase appointment conversion rates and ultimately drives better results for your sales team. For example, automated sales appointment scheduler Calendly helped Churchill Mortgage save $415,000 in labor costs and skyrocketed ROI by 1,037%.

Furthermore, McKinsey reports that 31% of sales tasks are highly automatable with today’s software.

Here are the tools that we use every day for outbound sales appointment automation and wholeheartedly recommend: 

1. We use Apollo and Sales Navigator to gather detailed analytics about prospects. Key factors to consider are geo, seniority, specific titles, roles within the company, company size, and industry. 
2. Next, Looker Studio helps aggregate the intel from different sources and organize data into insightful visual dashboards for detailed reporting and analysis.
3. Calendly makes appointment scheduling emails a breeze for SDRs. This user-friendly tool simplifies the scheduling process by syncing your calendars and CRMs. With it, your prospects can easily select the most convenient time slot and book a meeting without back-and-forth emails. Extra pros include time zone conversion, customizable meeting types, and auto-reminders. 
4. HubSpot’s appointment scheduling tool is an excellent choice for sales teams already using the HubSpot CRM or those looking for an all-in-one solution. 
5. For those who rely on Microsoft Office, Microsoft Bookings is the go-to appointment scheduling tool. It integrates perfectly with Outlook and other Microsoft apps, providing a unified scheduling experience. 
6. Reply.io is a powerful platform for cold email outreach that comes with a suite of tools for sales team appointment scheduling. The top reasons to use Reply.io are email automation, personalization, smart follow-ups, and built-in A/B testing.

If you’re only ready for 1 tool, we recommend getting a good CRM (customer relationship management) system. Integrating a CRM into your outreach process is crucial for several reasons:

• Improves lead scoring and routing
• Tracks campaign performance for revenue generated and ROI
• Automatically creates new deals and tasks upon receiving a lead request/response to contact a prospect in a timely manner (Salesloft discovered the chances of qualifying a lead drop by 10 times if the response takes longer than 5 minutes.)

Outsource tactical tasks

Delegating specific tasks is a great way to maximize your time and get the best expert help without spending on hiring. Outsource appointment setting to virtual assistants or sales development representatives (SDRs) so they can cover the areas that need a boost.

Outsource SDRs for:

• Identifying and engaging potential customers
• Qualifying leads based on your criteria
• Nurturing prospects through the sales funnel

Use virtual assistants for:

• Data entry
• Scheduling appointments
• Managing email correspondence
• Conducting initial prospect research

Offloading the most time-consuming and least lucrative activities lets you focus on refining the strategic parts of the sales appointment setting process: your pitch, closing, and sales team training. 

How to prevent no-shows

Now, how to get sales appointments is one topic, but setting appointments that happen is another. To improve meeting attendance, have several strategies in place: 

1. Have a confirmation and reminder strategy. Good practice is to personalize each message to make people want to answer. For example: "Hi, John. Aside from our Q3 numbers you’ve requested, should I bring any other data to our meeting tomorrow?" 
2. Send multiple reminders — a week before, a day before, and an hour before the appointment.
3. Share a clear agenda for your prospect’s peace of mind. Outline the key topics, objectives, and desired outcomes for the meeting. Transparency helps the prospect understand the value they will gain from your demo. 
4. Offer easy rescheduling options, especially for the C-suite. Seemingly counter-intuitive, this step accommodates C-levels’ busy schedules and improves their chances of finding the time to listen to you.
5. Consider offering incentives to motivate prospects, such as a free lunch, access to valuable content, or a limited-time discount on your product or service. 

Creative ways to book appointments

At Belkins, we believe in processes. We confidently set quotas and KPIs based on our internal knowledge of performance projections across different industries, client types, and ICPs. It may seem like there is no place for creativity here.

However, by implementing creative strategies beyond the standard approach, we often exceed our projections. 

These techniques could include: 

• Offering a gift or gift card to everyone who attends a call
• Using conferences as opportunities to book in-person meetings
• Leveraging seasonal promotions
• Offering free product demos

Essentially, any approach that differs from a standard pitch and immediate selling is worth exploring to achieve above-average results.

How Belkins’ top-performing sales reps outperformed the monthly goal

Donorbox, a U.S.-based tech company offering online fundraising software to nonprofit organizations came to us with only a trickle of inbound leads. Our sales team got them 50+ appointments monthly. 

Before meeting Belkins, finding organizations that met their ICP was quite a quest for Donorbox — so they looked for a team of professionals to build the outbound process. Here’s what we did to reach this remarkable result: 

1. We explored the nonprofit market in detail, from payment schemes to the specific qualities of certain nonprofit organizations. 
2. We reviewed the existing ICP to make it more accurate and relevant to the company’s goals. After brainstorming, we decided to target companies based on their revenue, the software they were using for raising funds, and their priority language.
3. After picking the most profitable industries, we started an extensive A/B testing phase. We sent various email campaigns to multiple sectors, focusing on numbers and looking for the template and cadence that would drive 25 qualified monthly calls.

4. During our work, we exchanged opinions and suggestions with the company’s team, being proactive with new ideas and discussing the pace of the campaign. Maintaining a dialogue between all team members — in-house and outsourced — was the key to a smooth advance.

At the beginning of our work, we secured around 15 appointments per month. A year later, we generated around 50 appointments each month, with a 16% call-to-deal conversion rate. In total, Belkins’ sales reps scheduled around 600 high-value calls for this client. 

Takeaway

Hopefully, this post has given you ideas about how to set more appointments in sales. Ultimately, it comes down to knowing exactly what you want and being diligent, consistent, persistent, and creative in reaching this goal. A few things worth reiterating:

• Use defined processes and scripts, as they make SDRs’ lives much easier.
• A/B test everything; even a 0.1% improvement is a step toward more sales.
• Stay aware of the newest appointment setting approaches within the market.
• Make sure to know your prospect well enough to build personalized communication.

For more setting sales appointments tips, browse our blog, or listen to Belkins’ Growth podcast. 

And, of course, whenever you need to set more appointments without all the aforementioned hassle, feel free to contact us for the No. 1 B2B sales appointment setting service on the market!