If you’re like most business owners, your appointment process probably looks something like this: you take a phone call from a potential customer, chat for a bit to see if they’re a good fit for what you offer, and then book an appointment with them. It seems simple enough, right? But if you’re not including these crucial elements in your appointment process, you may miss out on some serious business. In today’s blog post, we’ll explore the most important elements to include in your appointment system and how they can help you close more sales. So don’t miss out—keep reading to find out more!
Let’s get people excited about working with you.
Knowing how to set appointments that stick is a critical function of your business and whoever is ultimately making those phone calls to set the appointments.
Most of the clients I work with don’t have the time or energy to do this themselves, so they’ve outsourced it to our service. With this, we’ve implemented a few processes, procedures, or techniques on how to make sure that appointments stick when we make them. Some of it we can control, like what we say on the phone and the questions we ask. But some of it we don’t.
You, the business owner, control the marketing. Or your marketing company controls how you get those leads. But more importantly, are the people who are interested in your home the right people? Will they be excited about making an appointment to see it? And will they show up for the appointment?
You could have a marketing approach where you want to just help everybody out there and market to everyone. However, this is not going to serve you very well.
Sometimes people will say they are interested in your offer, but then they won’t show up for the appointment. That’s why it is important to learn how to make appointments that people will keep. To begin, ensure that your marketing is effective so that people are aware of the offer.
I learned long ago that marketing has three sides, like an equilateral triangle. They all need to be equal. However, there is an order in which to go through them.
The Marketing Triangle
Imagine an equilateral triangle with each side representing a different piece of the marketing triangle. The first piece is the market, the second is the message, and the third is the media. Now, you need to do this in order because if you don’t, then it’s not going to work properly.
Think about this: if you don’t know who the market is, then there’s no way that you can talk to them in your message, and definitely no way that you can find them in the right media.
Let’s look at it in a fishing analogy.
Let’s say that you’re looking for Alaskan salmon. You’re not going to put a worm on a hook, drop the hook in Lake Michigan, and expect to get an Alaskan salmon. You might get something, and you probably will, but it’s probably not the one you wanted, and you’re going to have to throw it back.
It’s the same in your marketing. If you try to be everything to everybody, you’re ultimately nothing to nobody. Meaning, if the message isn’t right and you don’t have a defined target market for that message, the target is not going to hear it. It’s going to go over their head and they might say, “Oh, this isn’t for me.” It is similar to when you see some advertisements where you’ve thought, “Oh, that’s definitely not for me,” or “I’m not quite sure what they’re talking about.”
That’s when the market and the message are not matched up properly. They might be delivering the message to the wrong media or to the wrong target.
Know Who The Market Is
We start by understanding the market. This way, we can understand people’s pain points. Then, in our messaging, we identify these pain points. With social media, we can target people specifically.
This way, you can express exactly the language of the pain they’re having and how you can solve it. You’ll know when you do this right when a prospect says to you:
“I felt like you were speaking directly to me.”
Let me ask you these questions:
- Have you done this while exercising your business?
- Have you figured out exactly who your market is and what kind of message to give them?
- Have you then identified and gone to the right source of where they hang out (the pond they’re in) and gone to get them?
If you haven’t done that, I highly suggest you do it. If you need help with that exercise, I would be more than happy to sit down with you for half an hour via Zoom and go through that whole exercise with you. Click here to secure a schedule.
Get them to Verbalize
Let’s say you’ve identified your market and you’re getting a lot of good leads from the right people who are interested in what you have to offer. You’ve also got the right media you’re using to go grab them. Now, it’s a matter of making sure that those appointments stick when you speak to them on the phone.
They should already be really excited about working with you because you’ve hit the pain point. They’ve already reached out and said they were somewhat interested in learning more about your product or service. They’re definitely invested in the whole process they just went through. Now it’s just a matter of pre-qualifying them once you get them on the phone, which should be pretty easy since they’ve already been identified as the right prospect for you.
This step is definitely a lot easier when you have the right leads coming in the door. I put together a PDF on how to keep those prospects warm once they’ve set the appointment.
The best way to qualify a lead after getting them to go through all the processes is for you to get them to verbalize why they want to work with you, NOW. This is the key.
They need to verbalize why they want to work with you now, not tomorrow, not a year from now, but now.
All it takes is a simple question to elicit their reasons for wanting to work with you—and why they want to work with you NOW. Would you like to know what that is? All right. Here it is:
You say to them, “Why is it important for you to solve this problem, whatever it happens to be?
They will tell you why they need the problem fixed now. They want to work with you to fix the problem. Telling themselves why they need you to fix the problem will help them keep their promise to themselves. Once they verbalize that, now it’s critical to follow up with a statement to further solidify the answer in their mind. So you’d say something along the lines of, “Oh wow, I can definitely see why you want to set that appointment. Now we better get it scheduled right away. Let me see what I have in the next couple of days to set that appointment.”
And there you go—you’ve got an appointment that’s going to stick because they’ve actually verbalized why they need to fix a problem. More importantly, the urgency behind it was also said out loud. Then you’ve reinforced that statement with a reassurance that they will get an appointment so you can fix the pain point.
Make sure you do not schedule it too far out from when it starts to cool off. You want to schedule them the next day or within three days. Utilize the PDF that I have shared in this article in terms of how to keep them warm over the next couple of days leading up to their appointment.
Let’s get started! I’m happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have about these strategies. Schedule an impact call with me today so we can continue this conversation over the phone, and find out how it could help your business grow.
