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appointment-setting

What are Appointment Setting Services?

Trying to grow your business in the B2B space comes with a lot of work! In order to win more customers for your B2B business, you have to engage with prospects at each stage in the sales funnel. Realistically, some prospects will be ready to buy but more will want to know more before doing business with you. However, you only have so many team members that can speak with these buyers! That’s why tons of B2B businesses today are outsourcing help with appointment setting services.

What do appointment setting services do?

Think of appointment setting services as your personalized business assistant or phone answering service. While you focus on high-priority tasks such as speaking or meeting with clients/customers and closing sales, your appointment setting service will continue to book new appointments with prospective customers. That way, your pipeline is always full and you always have new business waiting for you while you stay busy.

What other duties can appointment setters handle?

Appointment setting services primarily book appointments with prospects who want to learn more about your product or service. This can free up tons of time and resources for you and your team. In addition, appointment setting services can typically handle much more than just booking appointments.

1. Answer basic questions

High-funnel prospects typically have tons of questions to ask before proceeding to do business with you. While these questions may be easy to answer, they can take up lots of time! Appointment setting services can address “small talk” and initial interactions with new prospects. They answer preliminary questions for you so you can cut to the chase once the next appointment is set up.

2. Provide testimonials

Most prospects want to be sure your company is reliable before proceeding. A good appointment setting service will be able to provide positive customer testimonials about your product/service. They can also pass along success stories, case studies, or other forms of social proof that you can be counted on.

3. Schedule or perform demos

Most prospects will want to see a demo or example of your product/service after they get the “small talk” out of the way. Appointment setters can schedule demos with you or another sales rep. They may also be able to provide prospects with short “demo videos” or other pieces of information before your first appointment. At a medical office, appointment setting services can help you with medical scheduling needs.

4. Qualify sales leads

When having that initial conversation with a prospect, your appointment setter can determine whether or not a lead is qualified. In other words, they will ask the prospect what their needs are while explaining what you do. If it makes sense to proceed, they will set up an appointment. If it doesn’t, they will kindly let them know. That way, you’re focusing your time on relevant prospects.

5. Re-schedule or cancel appointments

Rescheduling and canceling booked appointments may also seem like an easy, painless task. However, it can be very time consuming, especially if you’re a large company or have a large client base! Customers or prospects that want to change their appointment can be routed to your appointment setting service, who will handle all the details for you.

Which industries use appointment setting services?

Appointment setting services are great for a huge variety of B2B businesses. They’re great for sales teams who are selling B2B products and services. But they’re also great for healthcare professionals, real estate professionals, and more! Here are some of the industries that benefit from using appointment setting services:

  • Medical offices
  • Dental offices
  • Real estate or property management companies
  • Law firms
  • Accounting or financial firms
  • Technology and software companies 
  • Office equipment dealers
  • Commercial food & beverage providers
  • Construction companies and contractors
  • And many more

What types of appointment setting services are there?

When running a business, it’s equally important to help current customers and find new prospects. However, not every prospect that may benefit from your product or service knows you exist! That’s why you can hire both inbound and outbound appointment setting services.

Inbound Appointment Setting

Inbound appointment setting services are types of inbound call centers. They handle appointment requests from current customers or prospects that call in on their own. Basically, the current or prospective customer calls your business to schedule an appointment. Your appointment setting service can handle duties like:

  • Answering preliminary questions
  • Booking the appointment
  • Rescheduling or canceling the appointment
  • Sending notifications to you about appointments
  • Log data in your CRM

Outbound Appointment Setting

There are also services that handle outbound appointment setting. This is essentially when your appointment setter contacts decision-makers that fall under your target market, and may be interested in hearing about your product or service. When handling outbound appointment setting, the service will:

  • Contact decision-makers at prospective businesses
  • Inform them about your product or service and its benefits
  • If interested, they will make sure the lead is qualified
  • Set the appointment
  • Send you notifications about the new appointment details

Both of these types of appointment setting services will ultimately benefit your business! There are many services that can do both for you.

How much does outsourced appointment setting cost?

Hiring an outsourced appointment setting service can save your company tons of money, compared to hiring an in-house team. When handling appointment setting for sales teams, appointment setters are often compared to an in-house “Sales Development Representative” (SDR) role. The salary for this role is typically at least $40,000 annually or over $3,000 monthly. 

However, when hiring an outsourced appointment setting service, you will end up paying much less. Appointment setting services will either charge per appointment scheduled or per minute on the phone (whether an appointment is scheduled or not). Take a look at the average industry rates for both “by appointment” fees and “by the minute” fees:

Cost per appointmentCost per minute
$10 - $200
depending on industry
$0.70 - $1.40 
per minute

At these rates, it makes much more sense to outsource appointment setting help!

Who are the top appointment setting service providers?

There are tons of services today that offer appointment setting services. Many also offer other inbound call management needs in addition to appointment setting! While researching, take a look at top appointment setting services, which industries they help, and what functions they offer.

Here are a few top service providers as well as the industries they are equipped to help:

Service providerIndustries they helpTop functionsPricing
EBQ - Tech/software companies
- B2B sales
- Inbound appointment setting
- Outbound appointment setting
- Sales development
- Sales lead qualifying
- On-boarding customers
Unavailable: call for a quote
Answering Service Care - Medical
- Legal
- Real Estate
- B2B service providers
- And more
- Inbound appointment setting
- Call recording/data tracking
- IVR
- On-call scheduler
Starter: 50 minutes, $49 per month 

Small business: 150 minutes, $145 per month

Business: 250 minutes, $225 per month

Premium: 500 minutes, $440 per month
AnswerConnect - Legal
- E-Commerce
- Financial
- Medical
- Dental
- Real Estate
- IT Services
- Marketing
- Hospitality
- And more
- Inbound appointment setting
- Inbound sales
- 24/7 live answering
- After hours answering
- Customer support services
- Call routing and transferring
$149 per month on average  

or

$1.49 per minute

Learn More

Did you know that phone answering services handle appointment setting in addition to tons of other inbound call management duties? Learn more about phone answering services or figure out how to find the best answering service for your business needs. Additionally, if you work in the medical field, consider looking into medical answering services to handle appointment setting and much more.

Ready to compare prices? 360Connect’s free web-based tool helps businesses find the best appointment setting or call center service for their needs. Just tell us a bit about what you need, then we’ll match you with providers at no cost. Looking forward to helping!

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