Our Top 3 Tips for Getting Buyers to Sales Appointments

March 15, 2020

Moving leads along from enquiry to attending a sales appointment is one of the biggest jumps in the sales funnel, and can prove difficult without the right knowledge. You have to find the right balance between promoting your project and making each lead feel understood for their unique needs. So what’s the best way to go about it?

Here, Mike Bird talks to Jake Taylor about Social Garden’s top three tips for increasing your appointment attendance rate — which should (hopefully) lead to more conversions overall.

Three tips to increase appointment attendance

#1: Be clear on your intention and value offering

Ensuring there is no misunderstanding on what the customer will be gaining from an appointment with your team reduces hesitation and builds a trusting relationship from the outset.

Mike: Our number one tip, to begin with, is making sure that the prospect is very clear from the outset that the purpose of the appointment is to help them to work out whether or not this is the right project for them. It’s important that they know without doubt that their time spent with you is not just an opportunity for you to sell, sell, sell.

Jake: Any appointment or interaction you have with a lead has to be of value. To get the customer on side, the appointment has to have perceived value and show them that they might learn something new. This is valuable because they’re usually at a point in their journey where they’re seeking more information about the project, in order to confirm if it’s even right for them.

Mike: At this stage, you should also be really clear in communicating what’s different about your display suite relative to all the other calls and appointments the lead may have had. Again, you need to reinforce how an appointment with you is going to help them buy, rather than get them trapped in an awkward sales experience.

#2: Meet in the customer’s space

With a sales appointment, it’s a great idea to meet the customer in a space where they’re comfortable to reduce any sense of inconvenience and put them at ease.

Mike: Something we’ve found over the years is that in-home appointments are really effective for property investment sales. They’re not so great for the owner-occupier, who needs to come and see and feel the display suite for themselves. But certainly, with the time-poor nature of property investors, we often find that an in-home appointment — or even going to their workplace or a cafe — is an incredibly effective way of increasing appointment attendances, and then obviously converting those into sales.

#3: Understand their lifestyle and needs

Booking a sales appointment with consideration for the lifestyle and commitments of each potential customer is the final step in increasing appointment attendance. If you limit the time slots available for display appointments, you could be limiting your audience!

Mike: Our third and final tip is for when you’re profiling the customer and asking them questions around why they’re looking for a certain type of product or whether they have children, for example. It’s so important to use that time to get a real understanding of their lifestyle and commitments. For example, if you’re speaking to a single mother of two and you offer her an appointment at 3pm during the term, that’s clearly when she’ll have to pick up her kids, which gives the impression that you haven’t been listening to her needs. It’s all about making it easy for your customers and ensuring that your appointment fits in with their lifestyle, rather than booking in any old time that might be unrealistic for them to attend.

Jake: Sometimes, and especially in a hot market, sales teams see a commitment to a smaller display window time as a qualifying factor. But realistically, you’re just restricting your own access to the customers who are trying to find out more about the project and the sales process.

Experts in sales appointments

We understand how complex the process from enquiry to appointment to conversion can be. We’re plenty experienced, though — you can read some of our case studies here to see how we’ve helped convert thousands of leads across nearly a decade of experience.

Want safe hands in a tough market? Get in touch with us at Social Garden today and let us help you increase appointment attendance.