How I made 11 sales appointments in 24hrs without picking up the phone. (one week before Christmas) 

Over the last 5-10 years peoples habits have changed in the workplace.  It wasn't that long ago that if you called someones cell phone, they would become very angry at you for calling them on their cell phone.  "How'd you get my number?"  was a response people would give.  Now it has become the norm.  I don't know if there are any stats out there about how people answer the phone at their office but I would guess that over the last 5-10 years the percentage of people actually picking up their phones at the office has dramatically decreased.  This goes for email as well.  Today we get on average 121 emails a day.  I think I am more than double that and it is very hard to read them all.  The point is that you have to be more creative and deliberate with how you go about getting appointments and communicating with potential customers.  

I was able to get 11 new sales appointments in 24hrs and not have to speak with anyone.  How did I do this?  It started with strategy.  I was asked by our CEO to get our new media kit into prospects hands.  I actually don't like media kits or generally sending information out unsolicited but it is necessary.  Although one of the things that have changed over the years is that people want more information and they want to make decisions for themselves on their own time now more than ever.  Having information on your company's product or service is a must and thinking about the delivery channel and the follow up is a smart way of doing business.  It helps if you are a newer product that people want to learn about.  So I needed to take the idea of getting the new media kit into people's hands and make it appealing.  So here's what I did and how it led to 11 appointments.  I created a 3 step funnel and decided that I was going to use this opportunity to try and set up appointments for the next week.  The process went 1.)  Email  2.)Download 3.)  Email again.  You will need an email database (We use Mailchimp), calendly integration (free), and a little creativity to pull this off

Step #1) 

Initial Email- I sent out an email talking about a recent success story with one of our clients.  This was a very short email that went to our database.  In it I talked about how a client has grown their business with us in the last year and if you were interested in growing your business and learning more you could click on the link to get more info.  I also added at the end of the email an automatic email link that said if you want to speak about this right away click here.  There were a certain amount of people that clicked that "right away" link and I got appointments directly from that.  Those that clicked "right away" asking to meet, I sent them a calendly link where they could choose a time that works for them to meet with me.  I got about half of the appointments from this.   Most people clicked on the "Learn more" link to see how to work with us.  You can read about Calendly at the bottom of this post.

Step #2

Download-  When people who were interested in learning more clicked on the link, they were brought to a landing page which I created in Mailchimp, which was very easy.  On that page I provided more stats of how we are working with clients.  I had a capture form that got peoples names, phone numbers and email addresses.  In return for putting their info in they received our media kit as a download.  This was much better than just sending the media kit out and saying here's our new media kit.  It made it more special and siphoned out the people just looking vs the people that were interested in truly learning more about how to work with us.  One of the things that I decided was that I didn't want to give just anyone access to my Calendly integration.  I wanted it to be people who have given me their information and who were qualified a little more.  Also before setting up an appointment once you got my Calendly link, I was able to ask a few qualifying questions which were good to have for each meeting and gave us something to specifically discuss.

Step #3

Last Email-  I sent a follow up email to all the people that downloaded the media kit.  In that email it was pretty straight forward.  Thank you for your interest in our media kit.  If you want to talk in more detail I would be happy to do that.  You can set up time to speak with me here. (This is where people could click on my calendly integration to make an appointment with me.)

That was it.  I got 11 appointments out of that and I have a 33 more people that have downloaded the media kit that I need to try and convert.

A little background on the Calendly.  Calendly is a calendar software integration that connects to your calendar.  It gives the customer the opportunity to meet with you when it is good for them and does it seamlessly.  The free account is sufficient to try something like this.  When you set up a Calendly integration you are able to tell it when you are available to meet.  Customers can click on the link and figure out when is good for them to meet with you.  They pick a time and it automatically gets put into your calendars.  No talking necessary.  Easy peasy.... 

Here are a couple things you can do in addition to this strategy to be more successful at setting up appointments.

1.)  Customize-  You need to speak to that person.  Gone are the days that you can blast out generic messaging to prospects.  You are lucky if you are able to get past spam filters.  You want to speak directly to that person and a possible need that they may or may not have.  You need to quickly get their attention.

2.)  Do your research-  I wouldn't reach out to a prospect unless you know something about them.  It is much better to be able to mention something that they are specifically going through right now.  They might have just acquired a new company, launched a new product or it might be coming up on their busy season.  If you can show that you know a little about their business they are more likely to respond.

3.)  Know who you're emailing-  Remember calling companies and asking for the marketing director?  A lot of companies would say that "I need a name of someone if I am going to transfer you".  That was always very strange to me.  Today it is much easier.  Go on linked in and look at their profile and get an understanding of who they are.  This will help you to better position why they would like to meet with you.