In short
- Appointment setting means calling to book an appointment, not to sell.
- Calling yourself fits if you can free up fixed hours every week and your offer still needs sharpening. Outsourcing fits if those hours are not there and you already know who your customer is.
- Either way, five things have to be ready: an ideal customer profile, a call list, a call script, qualification criteria and the name of the person who takes the appointment.
- Measure appointments that actually take place and meet your criteria, not the number put in the calendar.
- The rules in this article are the Dutch rules. In the Netherlands you need prior consent to call natural persons. Rules differ per country.
1. What appointment setting is, and what it is not
In appointment setting, someone calls a list of companies with one outcome in mind: an appointment on a fixed date and time, with the right person. The caller does not sell anything. They check whether the company fits, create enough interest for a conversation and record the appointment.
How to open and run such a call is covered in our article on cold calling in B2B. This article is about what comes before that: who makes the calls, and what has to be ready.
2. Call yourself or outsource: five questions
There are three routes: calling yourself, having an employee call, or hiring an external calling team. An employee keeps the knowledge in-house, but has to be recruited, trained and managed. For the choice between doing it yourself and outsourcing, these five questions make the difference.
1. Do you have fixed hours every week? Calling only works with regularity. If you call when there is time left over, you do not call in busy weeks, and that is exactly when the calendar dries up a month later. If you cannot keep a fixed block free, calling yourself is off the table.
2. Do you already know who your customer is? If you are still looking for the right industry or job role, you learn the most by calling yourself. An external team can only call well once you can give that answer.
3. Can you explain your offer in two sentences? An outside caller does not have your expertise. If your service can only be explained with a lot of background knowledge, training takes more time.
4. Is your market large enough? A calling team needs a list that keeps it going for weeks. If your market consists of a few dozen companies, you are better off calling them yourself, with individual preparation per company.
5. Who takes the appointments? More appointments only help if there is someone who can handle them well. If your salesperson’s calendar is already full, solve that first.
3. What has to be ready before anyone calls
Whether you call yourself or outsource it, these five things determine the result.
Ideal customer profile. Record which companies you want to speak to: industry, company size, the job role of your contact and who decides. Also write down who you do not want to speak to.
Call list. A list of companies that match that profile, with a contact person and a phone number for each. The quality of the list matters more than its length.
Call script. Not a text to read aloud, but a fixed line: who you are, why you are calling, which questions you ask and which appointment you propose.
Qualification criteria. Decide in advance when an appointment counts. Keep it to a few points you can test, for example a minimum company size, the job role of the contact person and whether the decision-maker is at the table. Criteria the caller cannot check in a single call do not work.
Who takes the appointment. Agree whose calendar the appointments go into, how long they last, whether they are online or on site, and which information the caller passes on.
4. The rules in the Netherlands
This section describes the Dutch rules only, in outline, and it is not legal advice. Rules differ per country, so check the rules of the country you are calling into. In the Netherlands, anyone who calls natural persons to sell something needs prior consent, or an existing customer relationship. That applies to consumers, but also to sole proprietorships and general partnerships (the Dutch eenmanszaak and vof), because there is a natural person behind them. For legal entities such as a Dutch bv (private limited company), that consent requirement does not apply. You always have to respect an objection immediately and record it, so the same person is not called again.
A call list also contains names and direct numbers, and those are personal data. Under the GDPR you need a legal basis for that. You can read more in Lead generation and the GDPR.
5. Measuring: appointments that take place
A booked appointment is not yet a conversation. If you only count what was put in the calendar, you steer on the wrong number. Track four things every week:
- Booked appointments: what the caller has recorded.
- Appointments that take place: the conversation happened, with the person it was agreed with.
- Appointments that meet your criteria: assessed after the conversation by the person who held it.
- What comes out of it: a quote, a follow-up meeting or an order.
The gap between one and two tells you something about the confirmation and the time between the call and the appointment. The gap between two and three tells you something about the call list and the criteria. The gap between three and four lies with the sales conversation and the offer, not with the caller.
Give the caller brief feedback after every appointment. Without that feedback, the list and the script do not improve.
6. The mistakes made most often
- Inventing criteria afterwards. The discussion about what a good appointment is then only starts when the first appointment disappoints.
- Counting only booked appointments. The caller is rewarded for appointments that do not take place.
- No confirmation. An appointment without a calendar invitation and a reminder beforehand is easily forgotten.
- Waiting too long. The more time there is between the phone call and the appointment, the greater the chance that the interest has faded.
- Poor handover. The salesperson does not know what was discussed and starts again, with the prospect watching.
- Stopping too early. After a week without appointments the script or the whole plan is thrown out, while the list has not even been called through once.
7. Checklist before you start
- Ideal customer profile on paper, including who you do not want to speak to
- Call list with a contact person and number per company
- Checked which numbers you may call without consent
- Call script with opening, questions, objections and the proposal for the appointment
- A few qualification criteria that can be tested in a single call
- Recorded who takes the appointments and whose calendar they go into
- Confirmation and reminder arranged
- One place where objections and outcomes are tracked
8. How we do it
If you choose to outsource, you can do that with us: with B2B appointment setting, our own calling team calls your target audience and books the appointments straight into your calendar. After the discovery call you complete an onboarding form with your company name, what you offer and who your ideal customer is. Then we record the ideal customer profile (industry, company size, job role and decision-maker), build a targeted call list from your target market and write a tailored call script, which we prepare the callers for.
You provide three qualification criteria of your own per appointment. We record these during onboarding and they have to be realistic. We guarantee 10 booked appointments with potential customers who match your ideal customer profile. They are usually in place within 1 to 6 months, depending on industry and offer. If they are not there yet, we keep calling until all of them are. The terms per service are on the guarantee page.
9. Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between appointment setting and telemarketing?
Telemarketing, or phone-based prospecting, is the broader term for winning customers by phone. Appointment setting is one form of it, in which the call ends with an appointment and the sales conversation follows later.
What do I need to give an external calling team?
An ideal customer profile, a clear explanation of your offer, your qualification criteria and a calendar in which appointments can be booked.
How quickly do you see results?
That depends on your industry, your offer and how reachable your target audience is. Expect a start-up phase in which the list and the script are adjusted. So do not judge the work on the first week, but on a period in which the list has been called through at least once.
Can you simply call companies in the Netherlands?
Not always. Under the Dutch rules, prior consent is needed to call natural persons, and that includes sole proprietorships and general partnerships. It does not apply to legal entities such as a bv, but you always have to respect an objection. This is the Dutch situation; other countries have their own rules. Have your own situation checked legally.
10. Summary
- Topic: having appointments booked by a caller, in-house or outsourced.
- The decision: call yourself with a new offer or a small market, outsource with a proven offer and too few hours of your own.
- Preparation: ideal customer profile, call list, call script, qualification criteria and a fixed person who takes the appointments.
- Measuring: appointments that take place and meet the criteria, plus what comes out of them.
- Rules: Dutch situation; prior consent is needed to call natural persons, and rules differ per country.
- Further reading: Cold calling in B2B · Lead generation and the GDPR