Evaluating Meeting Scheduling Vendors

Is your company considering working with an outsourced meeting scheduling firm? What is the difference between an outsourced meeting scheduling firm and a telemarketing firm? When evaluating outsourced meeting scheduling firms, there are some things to consider.

In a down economy, every sales manager is looking for an edge. How are they going to get their sales team to hit a quota that seems impossible? There are many things a sales manager can do to help their sales team, but one sure fire way to increase sales is to increase the number of new qualified sales meetings for their team to go on.

There are several issues with asking a team to increase time on the phone to cold call. Experienced sales people are too busy trying to close deals. These sales people feel “above" cold calling, and they probably hate picking up the phone to prospect new buyers.

Managers are now left with several options, which include:

1. hiring a team to prospect and set up meetings


2. hiring an outsourced meeting scheduling firm to schedule meetings for them

If you have decided to outsource your sales meeting scheduling function, how do you decide which vendor is the best fit for your situation? There are many vendors in this space that do very similar things. The major difference between vendors is in the quality of meetings they set up.

The best vendors to schedule sales meetings partner with their clients, and work directly and closely with the client sales team. The actual meeting schedulers on telemarketing teams usually don't work closely with the client sales team; their function is to call through a list and push meetings. This may work to an extent, but the quality of the meetings may be lower, and the rate at which scheduled meetings actually occur will be lower. A great vendor and the team assigned to the client should spend a lot of time to identify the exact type of prospects in an organization
that their client want to speak with. The outsourced meeting scheduling team ahould also qualify meetings before scheduling; they should identify the responsibilities of the prospect executive, what the executives are working on and gauge the interest of the service offering of their clients.

At the end of the day, anyone can set up sales meetings, but only a select few can set up quality meetings. Be sure to ask for references from any vendor that you consider working with. Look for a vendor that is able to schedule over 95% of their meetings with the right prospect and ensure the meeting occurs the first time.

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