The Difference Between Appointment Setting and Team Dialing

There are many sales enablement technologies and services out in the marketplace today, and appointment setting has been one of the most popular services large sales teams have used over the past two decades. In an effort to cut out cold calling and administrative tasks, this service provides sales teams with appointments with decision-makers, where the calling agents are required to learn about the product offering and persuade these decision-makers to accept an appointment with a rep.

While, in theory, this service makes sense and would ideally make it easier for the reps to sell, there are a variety of challenges companies face with this service:

  • You never know if someone will show up. A calling agent could book an appointment with the decision-maker, but, once they’re off the phone, the chances of them attending that appointment could be slim to none.
  • The calling agents don’t know as much about your product as you do. Since you’re outsourcing this function, your team still has to train the calling agents on your product quickly, and there will always be disconnects in product knowledge for those agents. It could impact whether an appointment was set or not.
  • Sometimes, the value isn’t clearly defined. For an appointment setting service to be worth it for both the business and the appointment setting company, clear expectations must be set upfront. Otherwise, there will be the constant battle between sales rep and appointment setters on the value of the appointments set.

That being said, appointment setting can be successful with the right company, but it depends on a variety of factors which may or may not be stable enough for your specific sales team.

On the other hand, team dialing provides sales teams with calling agents who are simply connecting them with decision-makers in real-time, without the need to dial. Instead of setting appointments, you are dictating when you’d like to start a call session, which propels the calling agents to start calling on decision-makers, eliminating the cold calling function and providing you with a live conversation with a prospect so you can sell more. Here’s a visual of how it works:

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Plus, these calling agents don’t have to learn your product or service since they are simply navigating phone prompts and trees, cutting out the wasteful time your sales reps spend on dialing. There is no disconnect in product knowledge since they will connect you, the expert, directly with decision-makers.

The benefits of team dialing are tangible. It is clearly defined as to what you will get with team dialing (around 8-12 live conversations per hour), and there is no disagreement over whether it was successful or not.

If you’re struggling with the cold calling function, consider a team dialing service like MonsterConnect. We make the calls and you close the deals.

Request a free demo of MonsterConnect today:

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