When it comes to getting more sales appointments, there are a million and one familiar tactics – from cold calls, emails and door-knocking to seminars and networking.
Because of all the noise, it can be difficult to know what really works.
For over 10 years, I’ve been helping business owners get predictable leads & sales appointments with their ideal clients each month.
I’ve spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars testing what works best.
And I’ve put simplified everything you need to do into five key steps.
You can see what the five steps are in this video.
I highly recommend watching the video first before reading the rest of this article.
The rest of this article will go through some additional tips on the best ways to get more high quality sales appointments each mont in your business.
Tips to get more sales appointments
Here are the best tips for getting high quality sales appointments each month:
1. Stop relying on outdated marketing methods
If you want to get predictable appointments each month, you need to STOP relying on slow, outdated, time-consuming and unpredictable ways to get appointments.
These include:
- Networking events
- Seminars
- Cold calls
- Relying on referrals
Now that’s not to say the above strategies do not work at all.
I’ve won clients from every single one of these “outdated” strategies.
They can work.
My point is: there are much BETTER ways to get appointments that are more automated, profitable and scalable.
That’s why I don’t use any of the above strategies anymore.
For example, networking events (if you go to the right events) can be a great way to get more appointments, but it’s extremely time intensive. Relying on referrals are great, but they’re not very predictable. You don’t know when the next referral is going to be.
Do you really want to leave your new business up to chance?
Of course not.
So you need to have your own marketing system that does both:
- Lead Generation
- Lead Conversion
And ideally, you want to do this in a way that is predictable, 100% online and automated.
This video explains exactly how you can do this.
2. Stop all your “busywork” marketing
Many business owners spend countless hours and thousands of dollars on marketing strategies that don’t actually bring in any leads, sales appointments or new clients.
Everyone today is talking about vanity metrics. Things like:
- How to get more likes
- How to grow your social media followers
- How to get more engagement on your posts
But none of that actually correlates with getting more appointments.
Take LinkedIn, for example.
There are hundreds of people who spend each day posting LinkedIn updates, commenting on other people’s LinkedIn statuses, joining and posting in LinkedIn groups, etc…
And whenever I ask someone that does this:
“How many appointments are you actually getting from LinkedIn every month?”
The answer is always zero.
To me, this is madness!
Why would you spend all day doing something that doesn’t actually bring in any leads, appointments or clients?
Is it because LinkedIn (the tool) doesn’t work? Or is it because their marketing strategy doesn’t work?
You see, I hardly ever post or comment on LinkedIn, yet my clients are able to get leads and appointments from LinkedIn predictably every month.
The key to getting REAL results with any marketing channel (LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, TikTok, YouTube, etc) is to have the right strategy.
Focus your time and energy on a strategy that will actually contribute to getting results.
Avoid a “busywork” marketing strategy that only contributes to vanity metrics and never brings in any real results (leads, appointments and clients).
3. Have an automated appointment funnel
Very rarely will a stranger before book an appointment with you unless they think you can actually help them.
This is why it’s important to take prospects through the different stages of the buyer journey (from stranger to client).
A marketing and sales funnel is the best way to do this.
And you need to link to your marketing and sales funnel from your website, blog and as many places as possible!
See also: What is the best all-in-one sales funnel software?
The more people you have going to your funnel, the more meetings you’ll be able to get.
But the problem is…
There are hundreds of marketing and sales funnels to choose from!
Not all of them are relevant to you.
And a lot of them don’t even work very well!
For example, selling an online product in an eCommerce store is very different to selling a professional business service.
So what if, just like me, you sell a service?
If that’s the case, there’s only one marketing funnel you need, and it’s actually one of the easiest ones to create.
It’s called an automated appointment funnel.
In short, an automated appointment funnel has 5 main pages:
- Opt-in page
- Video page
- Schedule page
- Application page
- Call confirmation page
The idea is that a stranger will go to the opt-i page to learn more about how you can help them by watching a short video.
Once they give you their name and email, you’ve generated a new lead!
Next, they can watch a video. And if they like what they hear on the video, they can schedule a call.
By taking strangers through this process, they will be more likely to schedule a call with you because you’ve built up trust with them through a video that explains how you can potentially help them.
4. Have a video sales letter
A video sales letter is a video presentation that explains:
- The big problem you solve for potential clients
- Alternative ways to solve this problem
- Why your solution to the problem is much better than these other ways
At the end of the video, if they’re interested in speaking with you to to learn more, they have the option to schedule a call.
A video sales letter (VSL) will allow you to get much better quality appointments because you’ll only speak to people that understand what you do and actually want to learn more about working with you.
A VSL is kind of like having a sales person working for your business 24/7. It’s like an automated sales person that will both pre-qualify leads and warm up leads before you speak to them.
So instead of paying a VA to do appointment setting for you, the VSL does all of this automatically.
A VSL can be a complete game-changer to your business if you don’t yet have one.
See ‘Step 2’ in this free training for more tips on creating a high converting VSL.
5. Generate leads
A lead is NOT the same as an appointment, but it IS the first step to getting one.
So, if you want more appointments, you need more leads.
How do you get leads?
Step 1: Choose one (or a few) marketing channels
First think about what marketing channel your target audience are most likely hanging out on and what kind of budget you have.
If you want to generate leads for free you can use:
If you want to generate leads with paid advertising, you can use:
- Facebook lead ads
- Adroll ads
- Google ads
- YouTube ads
- TikTok ads
Step 2: Send leads to your marketing and sales funnel
After choosing one or more marketing channels, you need to figure out a way to get leads into your sales funnel.
You can do this by promising a free video that solves a big painful problem your leads have (which your business also solves).
The video will be used as your “lead magnet” and if people like what they hear in the video, they can then schedule a call to learn more.
Step 3: Split test
After running your lead generation campaign, it’s a good idea to split test different ads, messages, videos, etc to see what works best.
Even if everything is converting well, you may be able to improve the results even more through additional split testing.
6. Follow up with leads
Most leads do not convert into appointments straight away.
In fact, according to our own internal statistics (our own business and clients), we’ve found that 1-2% of leads convert into clients within a 3 month period.
The rest of the leads will convert into clients afterwards as they continue to get weekly follow up emails.
Many other lead generation companies report similar stats.
This is why it’s very important that you follow up with leads regularly until they convert.
The best type of emails to use to follow up with leads are emails that provide value and build trust.
Tip: If you have leads that you haven’t follow up with in a while, chances are if you start sending them helpful educational emails, you could get many of those leads convert into leads and then appointments.
7. Use call-to-actions to schedule a call
Call to actions to book an appointment in your free content will help take leads to the next step in your sales process.
Providing free educational content is helpful in building trust with leads, but don’t do anything with the free content.
You always need to be sending people to the next step in your sales process.
For my blog and YouTube content, the next step in my sales process is to send people to my funnel.
And for my video sales letter (in the funnel) and my follow-up emails, my call to action is to schedule a call.
Don’t make the BIG mistake of forgetting to include call to action on your marketing material.
8. Use scheduling automation software to make your life easier
You can use scheduling automation software such as Calendly or Kartra calendars to make it easier for prospects to book an appointment with you.
The alternative to doing this is to get leads to fill out a form where you call them back.
However, the problem with this is that you don’t know the best day or time to call the prospect.
If a prospect books a call directly in your calendar, you’ll get a booked sales appointment in your calendar without having to guess what time is better to call them.
The scheduling tool can also automatically send a calendar invite to your prospects (which increases show-up rate).
You can also integrate scheduling tools with sales teams. This makes it very useful for sales professionals who want to share appointments with different sales reps.
The sales rep in your sales team will get a booked appointment straight in their calendar.
9. Increase sales call quality
When you increase the number of appointments you get, you want to avoid getting low-quality appointments. Every appointment you get needs to be with someone who:
- Understands what you do
- Has the budget to work with you
- Actually wants to work with you
You can pre-qualify appointments by using a video sales letter and an application form before they speak to you.
See also: how to increase sales call show up rate
10. Get help
In business, there are only three things that really matter.
- Generating sales appointments (your marketing)
- Doing sales appointments (your sales)
- Getting your clients incredible results. (Your operations / client delivery)
For many people I work with, they’re pretty good at doing appointments and helping their clients get great results…
But they’re completely lost when it comes to marketing (getting more appointments in the first place).
The reality is, if you improve your marketing by getting more warm leads, you’ll increase the number of appointments you get each month almost instantly.
You could try and figure out how to get more leads yourself and it might work.
But doing it all yourself is obviously going to be harder, take longer and you’re more likely to make a LOT of mistakes along the way.
Or, you can do this easily and quickly by learning from someone who has already done it.
At Skyline Social, we specialize in helping business owners get high quality appointments each month in a way that is automated, predictable, profitable and scalable.
How to get appointments, the easy way
At this point, there’s only so much we can cover in a blog post like this. However, you can watch my full free training which goes through each of the points above in a lot more detail.
Instead of spending hours, months or even years wasting time and money trying to figure everything out, we give you a proven solution that works.
This way, you can get results straight away. In other words, we make the tricky, time-consuming parts of developing and implementing a marketing strategy easy for you.
In the free training, you’ll learn a solution to your two biggest problems with increasing your appointments and winning more clients in your business.
1. Lead Generation. In other words, the people you are actually targeting. We help you to identify clearly who they are, and figure out the right message to send them. Then we get them to raise their hand to say they’re interested in learning more about what you do.
2. Lead Conversion. Just because you generate a lead, doesn’t mean that it’s a sales-ready lead and that this prospect is ready to become a client. You need to nurture and build up trust with the leads that you generate. This ensures you only get high quality appointments with people that already want to work with you.
This is the second part of the marketing and sales funnel.
After having shown you what to include in a video to get the best results, we show it to your potential clients. Then, we help you set up the whole infrastructure so people can schedule a call straight into your calendar.
This way, you’re getting a booked sales appointment with someone who’s expecting your phone call, predictably every single month.
Ashley Davis (or ‘Ash’ for short) is the CEO & Founder of Skyline Social. For over 15 years, he has been helping business owners with lead generation. Ash specializes in helping businesses get high-quality leads, appointments and clients each month in an automated, scalable and profitable way. You can watch his free Masterclass training to learn more.
