How to hire appointment setters for your sales team
Author
Vladyslav Podoliako
Co-founder and CEO of Belkins. Vlad’s an expert in the areas of culture transformation and leadership development, B2B sales, and marketing.
Updated:2024-04-09
Reading time:9 m
When you hire a salesperson, you’re looking for a specific set of skills: a mix of communication skills, the ability to understand and articulate the value of your product to the customer, the capability to build and maintain relationships, and, of course, the ability to strike the right deal. Yet, all too often, we expect our sales reps to fulfill many other roles to which they might not be ideally suited.
Appointment setting is one of those roles sales reps are often expected to do, even if they don’t excel at it. Yes, there are overlapping skills, but appointment setting requires a different skill set than face-to-face sales. Today, we will look at why appointment setting is so crucial to your sales strategy and the steps you can take to hire yourself the perfect appointment setter.
What does an appointment setter do?
Appointment setters are the sales team members responsible for reaching out to potential new customers to arrange meetings for your sales representatives. Appointment setter duties include:
The role is critical to the sales process. However, because of the organizational skills required, it is a different role from the traditional jobs of sales reps who tend to focus on closing deals and selling the product.
What are the benefits of hiring an appointment setter
Hiring appointment setters can benefit you and your sales team, dramatically improving your team’s efficiency by increasing the amount of high-quality leads and, ultimately, driving sales.
Increased efficiency and focus for sales teams
The first benefit of hiring a dedicated appointment setter is allowing the rest of your sales team to concentrate on closing sales rather than finding leads, which can considerably affect your team’s efficiency.
Traditionally, prospecting has always been part of the sales rep’s role. However, this can lead to 2 main problems:
Many sales representatives struggle to balance prospecting for new clients with maintaining existing relationships. This balancing act can become a real challenge and mean that either customer service or client growth suffers.
Without someone to coordinate the booking of appointments, there is often overlap when chasing down prospects, with multiple reps investing time into the same customers.
Hiring an appointment setter changes all that. It improves the efficiency of your existing team by reducing overlaps and increases job satisfaction as it allows sales representatives the time they need to cultivate relations and do their job well.
Higher conversion rates due to prequalified leads
Appointment setters are responsible for filtering leads, ensuring that only qualified prospects are scheduled for meetings. By using implicit data from website behavior, email engagement stats, and purchase intent, appointment setters can also help to initially evaluate leads and pass those most likely to convert on to your sales representatives.
This means that your sales team can concentrate their energy on the prospects with the highest sales potential, boosting their conversion rates.
Enhanced customer experience through professional first contact
Professional appointment setters also ensure that potential clients’ first interactions are positive. This lays the groundwork for successful sales relationships by providing reps with the information they need to hit the ground running.
Scalability of sales operations
Finally, with appointment setters, you can more easily scale your sales operations to meet demand without overburdening existing staff. This is especially true if you wish to outsource your appointment setting.
How to hire an appointment setter
Hiring an appointment setter can greatly improve your sales team’s efficiency. However, finding the right person with the right skills is crucial, especially as the role is central to your sales team and involves communicating with and coordinating multiple team members.
The ideal candidate should possess unique skills to identify and engage potential clients, filling your sales pipeline with high-quality leads. Here’s what to look for:
Strong communication and interpersonal skills
The ability to communicate clearly and persuasively is fundamental to any sales role. That goes double for appointment setters, though, as they are responsible for lead generation and, therefore, will be the first point of contact for new customers. They should be adept at initiating conversations, understanding customer needs, and maintaining positive interactions.
A person’s communication and interpersonal skills should come across naturally in an interview. However, by asking interview questions such as “Describe a time when you faced objection and how you addressed it,” you’ll be able to make more substantive comparisons between candidates.
On top of that, you should also try to select candidates that have sales experience as well as other experiences of working with people, such as volunteering or event organizing.
Experience with CRM and appointment scheduling software
Familiarity with customer relationship management (CRM) and appointment setting software is crucial for tracking interactions and managing appointments. This ensures that no-shows are recorded and calls aren’t missed or duplicated.
Of course, you will always need to provide training with your specific CRM software. But it can be a good idea to ask candidates to specify what experience they have with these tools in the initial application process.
📌 Pro tip: To make 100% sure of their expertise, you can check out candidates’ endorsed skills or the relevant certificates and tokens on LinkedIn.
Excellent organizational and time management skills
Organizational skills are non-negotiable when it comes to appointment setting. The role will involve juggling multiple tasks, from managing schedules to following up on leads and coordinating with the rest of your sales team.
Time management and knowledge of appointment setting strategies are also critical, ensuring they never miss a call or leave a lead behind. This is especially true for employees who work remotely and, therefore, must keep their own time records and may even wish to invoice for their time.
A positive mindset and focus on results
The nature of the role demands resilience and optimism, even in the face of rejection. There’s no denying that it can be hard to get knocked back multiple times and remain positive. However, a great appointment setter remains motivated, maintains a positive attitude, and doesn’t let rejection get them down.
A great way to evaluate this is to include some team activities in your hiring process. By setting difficult challenges that need to be solved together, you can measure candidates’ ability to work together as well as how different people approach a problem.
Alternatively, you can also implement role-playing activities in your interviews to see how candidates navigate tricky situations.
Defining the role
Once you’ve figured out what sort of candidates you’re looking for, it’s essential to define the scope of the role. There can be a lot of overlap with appointment setters and other team members, including traditional sales rep roles, order capture, and even some management roles.
While sales team tracking software can help to prevent this, clear communication is always key, so establishing precisely what each role entails is essential. You’ll want to start by analyzing the current sales team setup; this will help you to identify where your appointment setters can be of most value.
Then, create a clear list of tasks for the role, based on the following:
Utilize CRM software to track interactions with leads
Contact prospective clients via mass emailing or calling tools and manage customer appointment schedules
Utilize lead management software to categorize and prioritize leads
You will also need to budget appropriately, so it’s essential to define net pay and benefits before you start or consider what percentage of sales you want to put towards appointment setting and prospecting if you decide to outsource.
Finally, reading this exempt vs. nonexempt article might help clarify the details on different types of employees, their minimum wage and overtime pay so you can find the right person for the position.
Sourcing candidates
Alongside advertising the position across your website, social channels, and job boards (such as Indeed and LinkedIn), you should also consider using recruitment agencies specialized in your industry. Each resource will offer access to different talent pools, so if you want to find the perfect candidate, spread your net wide.
On top of this, consider using HR tools to track and manage applicants. Platforms such as Greenhouse and Lever hiring software can help you manage applications, candidate communications, and the onboarding process. This helps to ensure a well-organized recruitment process for recruiters, hiring managers, and your applicants.
Lever - the example of a hiring tool
Outsourcing vs. hiring in-house
When hiring appointment setters, there is one last thing to consider: Do you want to engage in-house, or is it worth looking at outsourcing your appointment setting? Each has its benefits, and which is right for you will depend on your appointment setting goals.
In-house
The main benefit of hiring in-house is that it gives you control over training and operations, meaning you can have more chances to ensure that your appointment setter aligns with your company’s values and processes.
To mitigate against the costs of hiring new staff, you could also research a few automation or time-saving tools. By using lead management tools, proposal software, and scheduling systems, you can boost the manpower of smaller teams, as they don’t get bogged down with admin tasks and can focus on creating new customer relationships.
Outsourcing
On the other hand, outsourcing appointment setting can offer flexibility and access to a broader talent pool with specialized skills and training programs.
The ability to scale operations quickly can also be a fantastic boon, especially for businesses looking to grow. Particularly, outsourcing facilitates growth that is tailored to a business’s needs. It does so without the overhead costs and hassle of full-time staff, including salaries, equipment, and processing payroll.
Hiring an appointment setter can help free up your sales team to do what they do best: closing sales and onboarding new customers (in some businesses). Having someone on your team who specializes in prospecting and organizing can refine your lead generation process and supercharge your sales team’s conversion rates.
Of course, it takes some groundwork to ensure you get the right person for your business, but the benefits are clear. If you want to grow your customer base and build your business faster without sacrificing efficiency, an appointment setter could be the solution you’re looking for.
Vlad’s an expert in the areas of culture transformation and leadership development, B2B sales, and marketing. He spent more than 10 years building technology products, has a background in communication networks and electronic device engineering.
