A trend for pay per appointment telemarketing has emerged over the past 5+ years. This model is seen by companies as a low-risk telemarketing option as they are only paying for scheduled appointments so they believe they are guaranteed results for their money. But the question is, what kind of results are they actually achieving and are there other risks or factors to weigh up when evaluating this model.
Pay-Per-Appointment is where companies pay a telemarketing agency to schedule meetings with prospects rather than engaging with an agency to run a full service telemarketing lead generation campaign. There are 6 main factors to be wary of when approaching this model:
1. Aggressive Calling Damages Your Brand
How important is your brand and how can you protect your brand reputation when you pass control to a pay per appointment agency? With pay per appointment campaigns, companies only pay for each appointment set. They do not pay for agent training which generally means that agents will not receive the specific client training necessary to support your company brand. Pay per appointment agents are under huge pressure to deliver the appointments which can often, and mistakenly, lead to very aggressive calling techniques, which damages your company’s overall brand reputation.
2. Are the Appointments Unique to You
There has been a long-held suspicion that some agencies operating in the pay per appointment space are selling these appointments to more than one client. How does this work? The agency uncovers an opportunity in a target company, for example, the company is planning an upgrade of their ERP system. The agency sets the appointment for Client A. Then they pass the details around other project teams so that they can also call the company and set an appointment for their clients. Ok, you have an appointment with a sales opportunity but now you have more competition for that business.
3. What Happens After the Appointment?
Usually pay per appointment agencies will agree to a very basic set of criteria for the appointments set. Their sole focus is on getting any kind of appointment so that they can get paid. They don’t care about what happens to the lead once it has been passed to you. Unless you have pre-determined and very specific criteria for lead acceptance, you might find that appointments you are paying for are unqualified and are not genuine sales opportunities.
4. Sales People Lose Confidence in Marketing
Sales people love getting out in front of perspective buyers but they hate time-wasting. The challenge for marketing is to ensure a steady stream of sales qualified leads from their telemarketing campaigns. If marketing start passing across unqualified sales appointments the sales team quickly starts to lose confidence and the relationship between marketing and sales can suffer. The sales team will forgo following up on these leads and attending these appointments in favour of working on genuine sales leads.
5. Buyers Don’t Want To Meet Everyone
It seems everybody is doing more with less these days and buyers are the same. They don’t have time to meet every salesperson that calls even if they have a potential interest in the offering. Perhaps it’s just not the right time in their buying cycle, or they have prioritised another project. With the Pay per Appointment model you don’t find out about the Potential Leads – the ones that want to have a call to discuss further, but aren’t ready to commit to a face-to-face appointment. Any additional market intelligence, such as what solutions the company is currently using, where they are in their buying cycle and who are the key decision makers, is lost forever.
6. Quality
Agencies that offer a Pay per Appointment pricing structure are focused on the quantity of leads they generate, not on the quality of those leads. There is no process to incorporate client feedback which is an essential to ensure on-going development and improvement of the campaign messaging. Poor quality leads result in less (or zero) Closed Opportunities for you.
Evaluating Telemarketing Models
Although the Pay per Appointment model of telemarketing has seen an increase in popularity in recent years, it’s important to understand whether or not it is a good fit for you. Decide what you want to achieve from your telemarketing campaigns. If the risks outlined above outweigh the benefits take a look at other telemarketing models that might work better for you. After all, your marketing budget and your sales resources are precious.
