Do you know the most important metric
that you can be tracking in sales
to know that you're on track to hit your sales goal?
Now, most people think it's most important
to be tracking sales numbers, but that's really not true.
In fact, it couldn't be further from the truth.
The most important metric that we have found
with all of our years of research to be tracking
is the number of appointments you're setting with prospects.
Let me put that in another way.
The most important metric to be tracking
is the number of discovery meetings,
or appointments you're setting with prospects.
Your ability to set the appointment is going to be critical
to your success in sales, and simply put,
if you set enough appointments with solid prospects,
you will hit your sales numbers, period.
Now, of course there are a lot of things
that you can be doing during those meetings
in order to make your sales efforts
much more productive and effective,
but if you are simply focused
on setting enough appointments, you will be successful.
Yet so many people struggle to convert
a conversation with a good prospect
into a scheduled appointment.
And this is a critical skill,
this isn't just a, it would be nice to have.
You must know this skill.
In this video I'm going to show you
the seven keys to set an appointment
with any prospect in sales.
Check it out.
(letters clacking)
Number one: don't set an appointment with anyone!
Now, you're probably saying to yourself at this point,
Mark, what the hell, (laughs) you've literally just said,
the title of this video is,
how to set an appointment with anyone,
and now you're saying don't set an appointment with anyone.
What gives?
Okay, here's the thing:
great salespeople don't have the goal
of just setting an appointment with anyone.
The goal is to set an appointment with the right person.
I was just talking to a customer of mine
who's in my online forum, and he was saying,
I'm actually having a lot of success setting appointments
with the marketing people at these companies,
but then what I'm finding is that,
once I meet with them, they then say,
oh, well I really need to get the buy-in
from the company owner before I can move forward.
And he said to me, well, what could I be doing differently?
And my immediate response is,
you're setting the appointment with the wrong person.
You want to set your appointment with the right contact,
the key decision-maker, the person who has access
to write a check or at least has budget
to pay you for what you can do.
So make sure, just as a first step,
that the goal isn't just to set an appointment
with anyone who has a pulse, but instead
we want to be sure that we're setting appointments
with people who at least from the outside
seem like they will be qualified to have a real conversation
and ultimately make an effective decision
to either move forward or not move forward.
So don't try to get anyone, get the right people.
Number two: disqualify the rabble during discovery.
Now, this is really big, because again,
so many times we get excited to just have
a person with a pulse who is willing to talk to us,
who's willing to sit down with us.
And the key thing is, we can't always know
if someone is going to be fully qualified
just through a phone call.
What we want to do is we want to at least do
some partial discovery even on that initial phone call
to determine whether this person is really the right person.
And so we want to be asking them some questions
that are going to help us understand
whether they're the right person.
And there are two ways to look at this.
One is of course, we could understand
through their title and all of that,
but the other is the types of answers
that they're giving us.
Are they really down into the weeds,
or are they thinking bigger picture?
Do they understand the cost
of the challenges that they have?
Do they have the right kinds of challenges that you solve?
If they don't, then we want to disqualify and move on,
and if they do, then of course,
we want to be setting that appointment.
But either way, what we wanna do is make sure
that we understand really early on in the sales process,
is this person likely to be qualified,
and thus we should set a meeting,
or are they likely to not be a fit,
or we already know that they're not a fit,
and thus we disqualify.
One of the key distinctions
between top-performing sales people
and everyone else out there
is the ability to disqualify the rabble
and thus spend the majority of their time
in front of truly qualified prospects.
The other powerful knock-on effect of this
is that you're not going to suddenly come off as needy,
because you're not trying to just set the appointment
with anyone, and that's gonna be
very obvious to the prospect.
They're going to be thinking, wow,
this person feels like a professional,
because they're not just doing anything they can
to get into my office.
Number three: be a doctor.
Now, this is building off of the previous idea
that we just discussed.
But I wanna go deeper, because what so often happens
from the perspective of the prospect
is they're meeting with a salesperson
and they're immediately feeling
like the person in front of them
will do or say anything just to get the sale,
and they're putting on lots of pressure
and they're doing things that just feel sales-y.
And what we want to do is the complete opposite of that.
We want our prospects to have the opposite experience
of the typical buying experience.
And the way we do that is by behaving like a doctor.
Not like a salesperson, but like a doctor.
Lemme give you an example.
If you go to a doctor, let's say you go
to an orthopedic surgeon because your back hurts,
and you say, hey doc, you know, my back really hurts.
Do you think that doctor's gonna come back to you
immediately and say, well, you're in the right place,
we have this incredible procedure
called arthroscopic surgery, it's unbelievable!
We're going to chip away at the bad stuff,
get you back ready and walking,
within a week you're walking,
within six weeks you're jogging it.
So you ready to do it?
Here, by the way, is the contract.
(laughs)
No! Of course not!
That's not how a doctor behaves.
But that is how so many salespeople often behave.
Prospect comes to 'em, mentions a challenge,
and then the salesperson says, well, we've got the solution,
we are the best at this, and we can do this, this, and this,
so would you like to do it?
Eek!
It's pretty gross, right?
You almost need to take a mental shower of that.
Instead, what we wanna do is behave like a doctor.
So we want to really diagnose the challenges
that our prospects are bringing to us.
So a prospect says yeah, you know,
we really are having some issues with our marketing.
Instead of saying, well we can solve that,
instead say, so tell me a little bit more.
Help me understand what's going on
with your marketing right now.
Get them engaged, be that doctor.
Go more deeply.
Number four: understand the upside.
You know, one of the keys to getting an appointment
with a prospect is that they have to feel
like there is going to be value in meeting with you.
Right, so put yourself for a minute
in the shoes of your prospect.
They've got a million things going, right?
And the last thing they need
is to spend 45 minutes or an hour with a salesperson
who is likely just going to waste their time.
So what we need to do is,
during those initial prospecting calls,
we need to help them see the value
of potentially working with us,
and thus get them to say, yeah,
of course that would make sense to get together.
Let's set a meeting.
Right, we need to help them see what that value is,
and one of the key ways to do this
is to help them understand the upside.
And where a lot of people get this wrong
is a lot of salespeople will talk
about the ROI that a prospect would get
by working with them.
But what's more important than talking about the ROI
is actually getting the prospect to tell you
the upside of fixing a particular problem.
Understanding the upside.
So let me give you an example.
You take it in my world, right?
I'm talking to a company CEO, and they're saying,
yeah, you know, our sales team really just isn't firing
on all cylinders.
And so I ask a question like, well, George,
if you were able to get your sales people
to be firing on all cylinders like you mentioned,
what do you think that would mean
in additional revenue to the organization?
And the CEO says, oh, well, I think
that we could easily be doing
an additional five million dollars in sales.
Timeout: do you see what just happened there?
I asked a question that seemed
like a pretty benign question,
and I got the prospect to actually start
to do their own math, to talk about
the value that my solution could potentially bring to them.
Now, they're not drawing a direct line
where they're saying, well, if I bring Mark in,
I will get another five million dollars.
But what I am getting him to think about is,
okay, this problem really means something,
so if I could solve this, and Mark is a potential solution,
then that could mean an additional five million dollars
in revenue.
That is the upside value of working with me,
in that particular situation.
And every single selling situation
can do something like this.
Maybe it's not upside revenue,
maybe it's decreased costs,
maybe it's additional profitability.
But every solution is going to have an upside.
What you want to do, though, is get your prospect
to articulate what the upside is
to solving their challenges.
If you do that, suddenly the value,
the obvious value of working with you
or at least of setting that meeting
becomes incredibly apparent.
And so you're not gonna be scraping and clawing
for that, just give me five minutes of your time.
Instead, you can set a meeting that's an hour long,
because geez, you've really gotten their attention,
and now they understand the value of meeting with you.
Number five: can I make a recommendation?
Those simple words are so powerful
when it comes to setting a meeting.
Now, (laughs) I'm gonna be frank with you.
I'm giving you some real secret sauce here,
but the phrase "Can I make a recommendation?"
is so incredibly powerful when it comes time
to transitioning into scheduling that appointment.
And here's the reason why.
Let's say you've gone through the conversation
and you've gotten them to articulate the upside
and you've determined that this is someone
that you definitely want to be setting a meeting with,
you then transition into setting the meeting
by starting with, "Can I make a recommendation?
"George, could I make a recommendation?"
And what that's naturally going to do
is it's gonna cause that to say, of course, yes, right?
And at the same time it's setting you up as the expert,
because now you've made a recommendation,
they've affirmatively responded with "yes,"
and so now they're completely open to that recommendation,
and then you would say something along the lines of,
why don't we schedule an appointment?
We'd get together face to face,
it'd take about 45 minutes, and we can dig
into some of these issues much more deeply,
and I could share with you some best practices
on how we might go about solving those challenges.
Does that make sense?
And naturally, they're going to say,
assuming you've done a good job up til then,
they're going to say something that sounds like "yes."
Now, if they don't say yes,
we'll talk about that in a minute,
how you'd respond to that.
But by starting that transition into setting an appointment
with "Can I make a recommendation,"
you're going to have a much higher likelihood
of ultimately getting that appointment by starting there,
rather than doing something cheesy and common like,
hey, George, you know, I'm gonna be in your area
on Thursday and Monday, would you have 10 minutes
where I could get together with you
and show you some ideas?
Super sales-y and cheesy, right?
Everyone's doing that crap.
Drop that.
Instead say, "Can I make a recommendation?"
Number six: always schedule a clear next step.
This is so important for sales in general
and it's so important for actually getting that appointment.
I want you to make a commitment to yourself
that you are never going to allow
any selling situation to end with an unclear outcome.
And what's amazing is that salespeople are doing this
all the time.
They're on the phone with a prospect, and it doesn't,
you know, it kind of ends in wishy-washy place,
and the prospect gives them something like,
hey, you know, why don't you call back in a month,
and you say, oh, okay, sure,
and then you know, it just ends in this really weak outcome.
Instead, cut that crap off.
Instead, make sure that there is always a clear next step,
at any point in the sales process,
but especially at the beginning.
So you want there to be a clear, scheduled next step
where there is a counter-invite
that goes out to the prospect, and they accept it,
even if it means, could you give me a call back in a month,
say something along the lines of, you know what, George,
I'd be happy to do that, do you actually have
your calendar in front of you
where we could actually schedule something
so that way we don't have all that back and forth
and miss each other.
And if they say no to that,
then you know you're in trouble, but if they say yes,
now you've at least got something in the books.
On the other hand, a much stronger situation,
of course, is, if you're getting together face to face,
make sure that it is in the calendar
and that there is a calendar invite
that has gone out to them
and that they have accepted that calendar invite.
We never wanna just be dropping by someone's office.
We always want to have that clear and scheduled next step.
Number seven: have a contingency for when they push back.
This is so key, because so often
we're in a selling situation,
and the prospect gets a little bit squirrely,
and they say, you know, this was a great conversation,
but the timing just isn't right, you know?
Could you call me back, maybe in six months?
And a lot of sales people go into something
that sounds like, oh, yeah, sure,
happy to call you back in six months,
you know, would it make sense to call you
on a Monday or a Thursday,
or whatever weak, weak response that they have.
Instead, I want you to have a contingency in place
for when they push back on setting that appointment.
Now again, leading up til now, we have to be sure
that we're doing everything we can
to really show the value of getting together,
but let's say they do push back
and they say, you know what, I'm really busy this month,
could we maybe get together next month,
maybe shoot me an email in a month
and we could set something up?
Instead I want you to have a contingency
that sounds something along the lines of,
you know what George, I really appreciate your saying this,
but having done this for a long time,
usually people tell me that
because they just want a nice way of saying
they're not really interested in ever getting together.
Is that what you see happening here?
Now, that takes guts, but if you do that,
what you're going to find is they're gonna say
something along the lines of either,
yes, you know what, this just doesn't make sense right now,
and then you can kind of put it to bed.
On the other hand, they may say, no no no, really,
I'm busy, but I'd really like to get together,
but just this month doesn't sound good.
And then you can come back with, okay,
you know what, that sounds totally reasonable.
How about we put something, then, in the calendar
for next month, and so we can just avoid
that back and forth.
We'll get together then, but at least
we'll have it in the calendar
so this doesn't just fall off the radar.
Does that sound reasonable?
What you're going to find
is that a lot of people are going to respond positively
to that, simply because you used that contingency.
It takes guts, but if you do that,
you're going to get a lot more appointments,
and quite frankly, if someone's being wishy-washy with you
on the phone about scheduling an appointment,
you don't have much to lose,
'cause they either want nothing to do with you
or they do want something to do with you
and they're just busy, and at least get that meeting
on the books.
So there are the seven keys to set an appointment
with any prospect in sales.
I wanna hear from you: which of these ideas
did you find most useful?
Be sure to share down below in the comments section
to get involved in the conversation.
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