Finding a B2B lead generation strategy that works for your business takes a lot of trial and error. Today, many companies are outsourcing their sales efforts to maximize their business potential. Sales development representatives (SDRs) play a significant role throughout the sales process and give your business the opportunity to boost revenue.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the components of the SDR role and how it can benefit your business in the long run:
Building a Sales Pipeline
Every B2B appointment setting strategy starts with building a sales pipeline. A sales pipeline is an organized way of tracking and following through with potential customers and evaluating what stage they’re at in the sales cycle.
Sales pipelines start with cold leads, which are prospective companies you’ve never been in contact with before. With cold leads, you have no indication on whether or not they’re interested in your company’s product or service; you don’t even know if they meet your company’s criteria. However, after an SDR’s first phone call with a prospective company, cold leads transition into warm or qualified leads. Although they may not be interested now, they may be in the future. Steps of building a sales pipeline include:
Generating Leads Through Outbound Prospecting
Generating warm and qualified leads is half the battle of B2B appointment setting. More often than not, key decision-makers (KDMs) are more likely to say “no” than they are to say “yes” to schedule an appointment. Generating leads is about finding companies that are interested and qualified for your company’s product or service.
When generating leads, it’s crucial to cleanse prospective companies. Cleansing involves gathering a variety of information to ensure you’re speaking with the right company and the best KDM for the client’s industry. When cleansing, your SDR should gather the following information:
- KDM name
- KDM title
- KDM email address
- Company qualifier
All the information above is crucial to ensure that you’re speaking with someone who can make financial decisions and that the company you’re prospecting meets your company’s criteria. In addition, the KDM’s email address allows your SDRs to distribute emails through an email drip campaign. This component of your B2B appointment setting strategy is crucial to nurturing the warm or qualified lead.
Nurturing Qualified Leads
Even if a qualified lead is currently not interested in your company’s product or service, it’s crucial to keep them in the sales pipeline if they have a need or interest down the road. Most B2B appointments that are set come from prospects who were initially not interested in meeting.
There are several ways to nurture a lead, including follow-up phone calls and email drip campaigns. These methods are effective because it shows the prospect that you haven’t forgotten about them and their potential partnership with your company. Additionally, lead nurturing allows your sales representatives to gather more critical data that could help facilitate a deal in the future. For example, a lead might not get into budget logistics during their first phone call. However, once they feel comfortable speaking to your SDR during follow-up phone calls, they might give an estimate of when they’ll have the money and approval to move forward with a project.
Follow-up phone calls enable your SDRs to speak one-on-one with the prospect to get an idea of where they’re at in the sales cycle. Through phone calls, you have the opportunity to get a more accurate timeline of when they’re planning to make a purchasing decision.
Implementing an email drip campaign into your B2B sales pipeline is also an effective way to nurture leads because it allows the KDM to look over your company’s website and digital content on their own time. Email campaigns are a less invasive approach to B2B lead generation and have minimal impact on their own. When paired with follow-up phone calls, email campaigns serve a more prominent role in your sales strategy.
Setting Quality Appointments With Potential Customers
Ideally, the end goal of B2B appointment setting is to set appointments with interested and qualified prospects. Although SDRs need to set appointments, it’s vital to schedule them with businesses that meet your company’s criteria. Without identifying company qualifiers, SDRs risk setting up meetings with businesses that provide little to no value to your company. Unfortunately, this can result in a loss of revenue and hours of wasted time.
Providing Value for Your Business
In addition to setting high-quality appointments, SDRs have the opportunity to spread brand awareness and provide significant value to your business. There are several character traits every SDR should have, including:
- Resilience: Having resilience as an SDR means consistently pursuing the “yes,” no matter how many times they’ve been told “no.” This shows that they believe in what they are promoting to prospective customers. A lead that hung up on an SDR a few weeks ago might turn into a viable opportunity after a few weeks. If you give up after that first call, you might miss out on your next huge opportunity.
- Adaptability: Every prospect’s needs are different. Being adaptable as an SDR is the ability to adjust a pitch based on each potential customer’s needs. From adjusting your tone on a phone call to rewriting an entire email, adaptability can take many forms and have a substantial impact on your success.
- Ambition: An SDR must be ambitious to promote your company’s product or service effectively. Ambition reflects that they care about the financial growth of the company.
- Self-Awareness: SDRs should be able to take a hint by the tone of the KDM’s voice. If they seem irritated, don’t push the conversation too hard because you could lose a potential buyer in the future. You might think that being pushy will help you keep the lead in your pipeline, but it often has the opposite effect. One bad phone call can completely unravel your sales strategy and render your efforts useless.
- Ability to listen actively: Active listening is crucial because it allows the prospective customer to feel like their needs are heard. Not only is active listening essential for selling the business model, but it’s also crucial from a customer service standpoint.
- Time management skills: An SDR is more than an appointment setting expert—they’re also data collectors. They cleanse companies to gather as much information as possible to generate and nurture leads, leading you to more business in the future.
- Coachability: SDRs should be coachable. This enables your SDRs to take their pitch and constantly adjust it to make it more effective. As your lead base changes, your SDRs can change accordingly.
Responsibilities of an SDR vs. Account Executive
SDRs and account executives (AEs) both play key roles in your sales enablement team. Essentially, they work as sales executives to ensure your company is generating business in both quality and quantity.
Compared to SDRs, AEs perform many additional sales roles, including closing appointments for high-quality leads and addressing the needs of the client. SDRs create the foundation for a sale, and AEs jump in during the final stages to seal the deal.
AEs are highly knowledgeable about the SDR role and use their enhanced sales background to close high-quality leads. KDMs are often interested in a company’s product or service, but they’re hesitant to set up an appointment. As a more experienced SDR, an AE can secure a meeting without it falling through the cracks.
AEs are also responsible for addressing client needs. If there are issues with an SDR’s performance, the role of the AE is to address it with the client and SDR. AEs strategize with the SDR to help them adjust their pitch as needed to help secure more high-quality appointments.
Benefits of Outsourcing Sales Development Representatives
Outsourcing sales development representatives offers many advantages to your sales efforts. With more than a decade of experience in this area, we conclude the following as the most significant benefits of outsourcing B2B appointment setting:
Cost Savings
Outsourcing SDRs is a good way to protect your company’s bottom line. When you hire SDRs externally, you save money on hiring, training, and retaining sales employees. You also don’t have to spend money on the necessary software that outsourced SDRs use to maintain a healthy and sustainable sales pipeline.
Time Savings
Recruiting and hiring new employees is a lengthy process and can take up a lot of needed company time. In addition to saving money, outsourced SDRs enable you to save time, which translates to generating more quality leads and incoming revenue. Instead of spending the better half of a year getting your sales program off the ground, you can hire an outsourced sales team and see results within a few months.
Sales Expertise
Outsourced sales professionals are experts in all things sales development. By outsourcing B2B appointment setting, you ensure that SDRs are only using the most up-to-date sales practices. In addition, B2B lead generation companies have access to all the best tools and resources you need to build and sustain a healthy sales pipeline. You don’t have to handle any equipment purchases, software upgrades, or training programs; your outsourced team deals with the logistics while you enjoy the benefits of a world-class sales team.
Is B2B Appointment Setting a Good Solution for Your Growing Business?
If you’re looking to boost sales and are unsure where to start, consider B2B appointment setting services with Abstrakt Marketing Group. Our sales teams work cohesively to develop and implement strategic processes—we build robust pipelines and set high-quality appointments for less than the cost of one full-time employee.
In addition to B2B appointment setting, Abstrakt offers exclusive content marketing solutions that allow your business to generate quality leads through landing pages and social media. We help industries like yours across the country optimize their B2B lead generation efforts, and we have the awards to prove it.
Ready to grow? Connect with us today to start a conversation about how we can be your partner in B2B lead generation.
