Confirming Sales Appointments While Lessening Cancellation Risk

Confirming an appointment is a professional practice that is expected by both the executive and
secretary from an appointment setting service. It cements the appointment and lessens the chance of
a “no show.” However, it has its risks. It gives the executive a chance to cancel the appointment thereby
wasting all the hard work and man-hours devoted by the staff of the telemarketing company who is
involved in the project.

So how do you confirm the appointment and yet reduce the risk of a cancellation?

First, as an appointment setting service agent, you must gauge if the executive is enthusiastic or is only
lukewarm regarding telemarketing services and the products and services of its client. For enthusiastic
executives, there will no problem about confirming the appointment. The challenge is dealing with the
hesitant ones.

There are several ways to go about it:

1. Confirm the appointment a day before the scheduled meeting, just within the last hour of the
working day. 
A busy executive’s appointments are rarely changed a full day before so there will be less possibility of a
cancellation.

2.Do not call. Send an email.

When the phone rings, the person on the other end of the line will have the chance to immediately
decide whether to keep the appointment or to cancel it. And a phone is 99% answered during office
hours. On the other hand, there is usually an interval in checking emails and replying to them. So do not
call attention to yourself and give the chance for the other party to cancel the appointment. Send an
email.

3. Send a voice mail.

I know, this is a sneaky way of confirming an appointment you are really hesitant to confirm, but
remember that your goal here is to lessen the chance of a cancellation. So use this sparingly and only
during desperate times. Call the office after office hours to confirm the appointment. Chances are,
nobody will pick up the phone and you can leave a voice mail.

In some cases it is best to take advantage of the common business etiquette of standing firm on
appointments unless it is cancelled.

Funny Telemarketing Services Jokes

People from telemarketing services and appointment setting service have loads of stories on funny,
weird and just plain awkward callers.

Take for example this call on free shipping:

Client: “I would like avail of free shipping for this product.”

Telemarketing Services Agent: “I’m sorry, but we don’t give free shipping for your product.”

Client: “I want free shipping.”

Telemarketing Services Agent: “The product does not come with free shipping.”

Client: “Fine, I don’t want the product.”

Telemarketing Services Agent: “How about I add $10 to your order and then give you free shipping?”

Client: “Great! Thank you! Thanks for the great customer service!”

Most people think that people who work for a telemarketing company have negative IQ. However, there
are documented calls that the reverse is true. This call is a good example:

The call center is located in Canada, but with many clients from the USA. This phone call comes in
toward the end of the 4th of July.

Client: “So, did you have a good Fourth of July?”

Telemarketing Services Agent: “Well, I’m stationed in Canada, so it’s a regular day here. We do have
Canada Day, which is 1st of July.”

Client: “So… then… is today July 3rd for you, or July 5th?” 

And here’s a weird call experienced by an appointment setter:

The caller was applying for a loan and this was where the telemarketing services agent was inquiring
about his income.

Telemarketing Services Agent: “Where are you employed?”

Caller: “I don’t work, I sell blood.”

Telemarketing Services Agent: “You mean that you sell blood at blood banks?”


Caller: “Sometimes at blood banks, sometimes on the street…”

I hope you enjoyed these funny telemarketing service jokes. Don’t be quick to judge that all
telemarketing services agents are losers, because the joke might be on you.

Spotting a Stressed Appointment Setting Service Agent

You can always whip an animal to keep on working, but you can never make a whipped animal work better. As a team leader of a telemarketing company, it pays to check if your members in the appointment setting service are stressed or not. The telemarketing services industry is one of the highest stressed industries. There are goals to meet, quotas to meet, boredom to overcome and rejections to conquer.

A low productivity is usually one of the first symptoms of a stressed appointment setting service agent. Low productivity may mean lesser number of calls being made within the allocated work time, or the same number of calls but lesser set appointments made. This may mean that your stressed appointment setting service agent has lost the drive to surpass the rejections. Difficulty in concentrating is also another sign of stress. So check to see of the decline in productivity is because of lack of focus on the task at hand and on the group’s goals.

Another red flag is the irritability of your stressed appointment setting service agent. Irritability is a common mental effect of stress. So when your top customer service staff begins snapping at both clients and  colleagues, it’s time to look at her stress level.

Changes in food intake may be a sign of stress. For some people, a greater intake of food relieves stress. This may be in the form of an increase in the coffee consumption or frequent snacking. For others, it may be a lack of appetite such as skipped lunches and generally an abrupt decrease in body weight.

Stress also has physical effects such as upset stomach, headache and muscle pain. Absences due to these may be a sign of a stressed group member.

As a team leader of a telemarketing company, be sure you know how to spot the red flags of stress. And
when you spot the signs of stress, be sure to address it promptly. This vigilance is significant for your team’s performance.

Should You Confirm Sales Appointments? The Pros and Cons.

After all the hard work bagging an appointment with an executive, should you give him an opportunity to change his mind and cancel it? This is a very important consideration for an appointment setting service. It often takes a minimum of 3 calls for a telemarketing service agent to get a firm appointment. Behind this appointment setting success is the hard work of the telemarketing company in setting goals with the client, training its appointment setting service agent with the clients’ products and industry knowledge, formulating and rehearsing the call script and overcoming call rejections. Precious man-hours were spent even before that first call was made. And more man-hours were spent by the telemarketing services company to track the executive and get him to agree to spare a few minutes for the sales agent to give a product presentation.

Should you risk all the hard work and ask just before the set appointment if the client still wants to push

through with the appointment?

Confirming an appointment before the scheduled meeting is considered a professional practice. Most executives and their secretaries expect that it would be done by the appointment setting service agent. It serves as a reminder to the executive and the secretary, in case the appointment was not entered in the work diary or was overlooked. It is also an insurance against a “no show” appointment.

On the other hand, confirming an appointment also gives the chance for the executive to give an excuse to cancel the appointment. This is perhaps the single most important negative aspect of confirming an appointment. Although the telemarketing service agent could always ask for another schedule, there’s always that nagging thought that had the appointment not been confirmed, perhaps the executive would have attended the meeting, as scheduled.

So, the questions remain, to confirm or not to confirm? The debate is still on.

3 Tips on Maintaining Enthusiasm Despite 100 Rejections

“We keep going back, stronger, not weaker, because we will not allow rejection to beat us down. It will only strengthen our resolve. To be successful there is no other way.” - Earl G. Graves, American

entrepreneur, publisher, businessman, and philanthropist.

Every appointment setting service agent working for a telemarketing company might as well have that tattooed on his forehead so that he is reminded of it every morning before he goes to work, before the working day starts and the rejections also begin; and at night before he goes to sleep to inspire him to wake the next day and go back to his telemarketing company and face the same percentage of rejections.

But after 100 rejections, how does an appointment setting service agent rise above the doldrums and maintain enthusiasm? Here are three tips on maintaining enthusiasm despite 100 rejections.

1.) Change the way you think about enthusiasm.

Do not equate enthusiasm with success. It is easy for successful telemarketing companies to be enthusiastic if the cold calls usually become qualified sales leads and rejections are at their lowest. There’s the self-satisfaction of being able to overcome the rejections that comes with working for telemarketing services. But if you’re one of those agents who are on an exceptional streak of getting a series of 100 “No thanks,” you just have to revise your mindset, lest you throw in the towel at the end of the week.

2.) Remember that you need the paycheck.

No work, no pay; no pay, no money; no money, no food. And that holds true for the rest of the working class, member of an appointment setting service or not. You need the paycheck, so you should rebuild your enthusiasm every day for the job that puts bread on the table.

3.) Rejection is not all about you.

Those irate persons at the end of the line do not even know you. So don’t take their wisecracks, negative responses and phone slamming personally. Every appointment setter knows that those in the telemarketing services are bound to encounter their fair share of these folks, just as these folks are bound to suffer from being summoned by a member of a telemarketing company from whatever they are doing to be asked for an appointment, often for products they don’t even care about.