the art of cold calling for sales appointments

How to Gain Agreement to a Sales Meeting

The art of cold calling for sales appointments is based around a 4 stage call script that should be created by you and use your own words and phrases.

Gaining agreement to a sales appointment is the 4th stage and here you'll see the sales techniques I've used when managing and training corporate teams to make appointments. This appointment setting process will make the calls easy, enjoyable, and give you a constant flow of meetings with qualified prospects. 

 How to Ask for a Sales Appointment Meeting

The art of cold calling for sales appointments is to make the process and the calls easy to use. The training here on creating your agreement gaining question comes from the course I've used when training professional appointment setters and sales teams that make their own sale appointments. 

Think about what you want to say to the prospect and write it down. Here is an example form a recent training course I presented:

Example
From the information you have given me, I can see that you could  benefit from the services we offer, so the logical next step is for us to meet to discuss this further. 

That’s the message, but it is not yet in the words that you will use. Depending upon your calls and what you are trying to achieve on them, the message may be slightly different. If the objective of your sales appointment call is to give a demonstration of a product, carry out a survey, implement a trial, or some other action, you can change the message to reflect that aim.

The above example is not a question yet, so we need to tag a question line on the end. It also doesn't state the benefits the prospect could gain by meeting with you. The benefits could have been presented earlier in the Reason for the Call during the Introduction Stage, but should be restated here to support your request for a meeting.  

Create Your Agreement Gaining Line

From the above you can see that a good agreement question when making sales appointments has 3 elements:

1. The Lead-In Line presenting the message.
2. The Benefit the prospect could gain by meeting with you.
3. The Question to ask for the sales appointment, usually tagged on to the end.

Let's start by selecting the Benefit you will use and the words you will say to present it, and then build the Lead-In Line and Question Tag Line around it. The art of cold calling for appointments successfully is using benefits to motivate prospects to move forward and give you agreement. 

The Potential Benefit for the Prospect 

Select the potential benefit you will use in your Agreement Gaining Question. If you have followed the other sales training pages on the earlier stages of the cold call script you may have already presented a benefit. If this received a positive response you can restate it here, if not select a new one. I say 'potential benefit' because within your message you may be saying: Let's meet so we can see if you can gain this benefit. It adds more reason to have a meeting. 

When you have selected the benefit you are going to use you should select the words and how you will phrase the message. Make sure you are presenting the benefit, not just a feature. you can include a feature that helps the explanation, but make sure you state what the prospect could gain. The art of cold calling for sales appointments is to customise techniques. Several people using this sales training could come up with totally different types of call scripts. 

The Lead-in Line 

Now add a Lead-In Line to the start of your Sales Appointment Question. 

What is it you are going to do for the prospect when you meet? Is it a discussion to discover their needs so you can propose a solution, quote for a service, or make improvements to their life? Whatever it is you are going to do, base your Lead-In Line on that action. Here is an example:

Example
The age of your property qualifies you for a free survey, with no obligation, so we can assess what needs doing and give you a quotation before any work commences and then you can decide whether you want to go ahead. 

This is the art of cold calling in a nutshell. A simple line that states why they should agree to a meeting, a survey in this case. The benefit of a free survey and having enough information to then make a decision on going forward. All that needs adding now is a Question tagging on to the end. 

Tag on the Question

You have Lead-In to give your question context and a Benefit providing a reason why the prospect should meet with you. Now you tag on a line that turns it into a Question asking for the appointment. You've done all the hard work earlier in the call, gained agreement, presented a Reason for calling. This simple question achieves our objective, it gains agreement to a sales meeting. 

Example so far
The age of your property qualifies you for a free survey, with no obligation, so we can assess what needs doing and give you a quotation before any work commences and then you can decide  whether you want to go ahead.

The question you add could be as simple as: What day would be best for the survey to be carried out?

This is a presumptive close, it assumes the prospect will want to book an appointment because of the obvious benefits you have presented and the qualification of them did earlier in the call. If you would like a question with a lower level of presumption you could use: Shall we arrange the appointment now? 

For your calls, choose a level of presumption and sales pressure that suits your prospects, your marketplace, and the types of products or services that you sell. Customising your calls in this way is part of the art of cold calling for appointments and will lead to greater conversion rates. 

The Art of Cold Calling - The Complete call

Now you have the complete question to ask for a sales appointment. Play around with it, try different words, see if other Lead-In Lines, Benefits, or tagged on Question Lines sound better. If you have used the training on this website for the earlier stages you now have a sales appointment call you can use. If not view them and start creating the other stages: 

1. The Sales Introduction Stage
2. The Motivator Stage
3. The Questioning Stage 
4. The gaining Agreement Stage - This page

There is only so much information and sales training that a webpage can present. To get more in depth training you can have the same course I use for my sales teams and learn all the techniques on the art of cold calling for sales appointments. 

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