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SMART Appointment-Setting Goals for Your Next Sales Campaign 

 

Setting goals is a must-do in any successful sales strategy. Most entrepreneurs understand that failing to plan is planning to fail. Goals help you set targets you plan on achieving within due time. Unfortunately, many companies set unrealistic or vague standards that leave their sales team running in circles trying to achieve them. 

Whether your business has the drive to reach these goals or not won’t matter if you aren’t setting timely targets that take into account where your business is currently at and where you hope to be by year’s end. The SMART goal-setting formula provides a week-by-week method that your sales campaign needs to meet the mark. 

The power in the SMART strategy lies in its easy-to-follow formula. Goals that are Smart, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant, and Time-bound strengthen your opportunity to achieve the results you seek. SMART goals will help you plan daily, weekly, and monthly strategies that drive you towards your ultimate goal.

In this post, our B2B lead generation experts will break down how you to create SMART goals for your next sales campaign that will improve your appointment-setting results.

 

How to Make SMART Appointment-Setting Goals 

 

Think in Specifics 

Business to business sales appointments will vary depending on where the prospective client is in the sales cycle. Set different standards for how you treat each type of lead, whether it’s a dead, interested, or ready to take the next step.  

If your B2B leads aren’t ready to purchase your product, these goals will help your salespeople know the next step for those leads and attend to their needs. They will attend the meeting or conversation informed on the next steps rather than pushing too aggressively for the sale, and, most likely, pushing the lead further away accepting your services.  

Setting specific goals for each target will better prepare your sales team and lead to more successful appointments. Getting specific will also improve your lead nurturing tactics and get you in front of interested leads ready to make a positive decision. 

 

Set Manageable Goals

As you set your goals, make sure that each goal is scalable. Right now, you could have set rigid goals without having scalable processes in place. Maybe there aren’t enough people on your sales team helping each other attain the goal. Perhaps you don’t have the space to grow. 

Whatever it is, there could be barriers in place that make it impossible to reach your audacious goals. Over time, these overly ambitious goals will drag your company down and set you back instead of moving forward. 

When creating an appointment-setting strategy, make sure you create manageable goals. Set goals that your sales team can actually achieve by working together. Know your team and the strengths that each rep presents. Put people into a position where they can achieve the goal. For instance, don’t send a new sales rep to close a deal. Instead, that opportunity is best suited for an experienced rep who understands the B2B sales lead’s needs.  

 

Consider Attainability

Are you setting goals that seem impossible without placing structures around it that can leverage you towards attaining it? Making attainable goals includes knowing where you are and the likelihood of reaching the goal before you set it. Some businesses will set these unachievable goals in hopes of pushing their sales team to work harder. While this may seem like a worthy plan, it can often have the opposite effect. 

One of the best ways you can set attainable goals is by creating smaller daily and weekly goals. While having a goal of reaching 10x last year’s profit seems far-fetched, breaking it down into smaller increments will make it more attainable. 

 

Create Realistic Standards

Only set goals that you can realistically achieve. Do these goals make sense for your appointment-setting team. Does it make sense for your business to go after this specific goal? Is it realistic? Is it attainable? Do you have the power to achieve it?

For example, your appointment setters have control over which leads the schedule meetings, which have an obvious propensity to purchase. Challenge them to set fewer appointments but only with B2B sales leads highly interested in your product. 

While this may seem like a backward ideology, each of these meetings is of higher quality, yielding greater results. B2B sales is a marathon, meaning that not every lead is ready to purchase within a month or two. By giving your B2B appointment-setting team space to breathe, you will end up with a happier workforce focused on setting appointments that reach your quality standards. 

Consider Time Constraints

You want to make sure that every goal of your sales campaign has time restrictions in place. If each goal has no endpoint, then you can never really achieve it. Also, putting a timeframe around each goal will put the necessary pressure on your sales team to perform accordingly.  

You can implement time-bound goals into your appointment-setting strategy by giving your team several scheduled meetings they must hit within the week. Please consider how many meetings you can handle, and the time it takes each rep to push the lead through the sales funnel.  

Give your sales team enough time to spend on each lead but push them to have enough leads in their circuit that they can schedule enough appointments to fill your docket. Keep in mind that setting daily, weekly, and monthly goals will give your team the confidence they need to hit their ambitious yearly target.

 

Appointment-Setting with Launch Leads

Over the past decade, Launch Leads has perfected the art of B2B lead generation using our B2B appointment setting services. Through phone, email, social, and web, our team understands how to generate desired outcomes that hit your sales goals. Our finely-tuned processes will consistently deliver qualified sales opportunities to your closers so that they can stay laser-focused on interested prospects. 

Working with our team of experts, you’ll meet with qualified B2B companies through our proven appointment-setting methods. Learn more about how Launch Leads can transform your sales campaign through our appointment-setting services. 

 

 

 

Post by Scott Smith 

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