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Updated August 22, 2022You’re reading an excerpt of Founding Sales: The Early-Stage Go-To-Market Handbook, a book by Pete Kazanjy. The most in-depth, tactical handbook ever written for early-stage B2B sales, it distills early sales first principles and teaches the skills required, from being a founder selling to being an early salesperson and a sales leader. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.
The last thing I want to cover on appointment setting is the basics of inbound lead capture and response. We’ll get into this in more depth in the following chapter, but I want to briefly touch on a number of key points.
As a result of your outbound appointment-setting activity, invariably you will generate what is known as inbound interest. People will read your emails and click on the links to your website to learn more. They’ll listen to your voicemail, open Google, and search for your solution. And if your website, along with your primary outreach materials, does a good job convincing them it’s worth engaging, you’ll want to make sure that you can take advantage of that and easily allow them to become inbound leads.
The basic requirement for capturing these leads is a means by which someone on your website can get in touch to express interest and engage with you. We’ll talk more about lead capture forms in the next chapter, but to start, this can be as simple as a big button that says “Request a demo,” with a mailto hyperlink to send an email to sales@yourcompany.com. If you want to get more involved, maybe even utilize the subject and content tags to pre-fill some information like “Demo Request for product name,” so the prospect doesn’t have to write anything. The more advanced version can be a Google Form linked from that button. Seriously, this doesn’t need to be brain surgery to start. You want prospects to be on that page, say, “Huh, yeah, this does sound good. I would like to learn more. Click” and be on their way.
The next step is making sure you know someone’s trying to get in touch with you. An easy version of this is an email notification that is generated from whatever form or mailto setup you choose. The notifications should show up somewhere you know you’ll be able to check on a fairly frequent basis. I like email notifications that are automatically foldered, such that when I pop into my email, I can see if that folder has gone bold with a little unread number count next to it.
importantLastly, you need to respond to inbound leads fast. We’ll talk about qualification of inbound leads later, but even ahead of that, it’s critical to respond to inbound leads as quickly as they come in. Don’t let them wait around—they’re excited now. At a minimum, you need to start the conversation immediately. Otherwise you’re not capitalizing on all that hard work you did garnering their interest. Grab a hold of it, and set the appointment!
In summary, business-to-business sales are very rarely a one-call close situation—regardless of what you may have seen on Boiler Room. Rather, it’s a stepwise process that starts with identification and then progresses to selling the prospect on a more formal evaluation. Appointment setting is the way to make that happen. Use thoughtful, methodical outreach strategies, and you will be putting appointments on your own calendar like a machine, teeing yourself to slam them shut come demo time.
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