Does your trucking insurance company use telemarketing to schedule in-person meetings with demographically targeted prospects in your targeted geography? If so, how effective are your efforts? Is there anything your organization could be doing to improve them? For instance, do they schedule 10, 20, or more profile appointments each month? Furthermore, why are you ignoring this opportunity to fill a pipeline if your trucking company isn’t making use of an appointment-setting initiative? Let’s review some of the key tips, techniques and best practices to ensure an effective appointment setting campaign:
- Call Script: A strong and succinct script is the foundation of everything. Summarize your value proposition. Consider what your agency would tell the viewers of a 30-second Super Bowl commercial. Why should truckers—owner operators, small or large fleets—talk to you about their insurance requirements? What do you offer that is specifically beneficial to these chosen prospects? If your prospects include fleets with 50 or more power units in addition to owner operators, you may need to create multiple versions of your call script. Furthermore, to increase caller effectiveness, you should have a list of the ten most typical objections and responses. Do you cover tow trucks, ambulances, or cranes, for instance? To assist the person setting the appointment, there should be a list of questions, objections, and responses available.
- Prospect List: Your organization needs to use a current DOT prospect list that includes fleet size and X-dates. There are many sources that offer these, with quality ranging from adequate to good, if you don’t already have one. Remove your current clients and active prospects from this list. Based on your target geography, X-dates, and fleet size, it’s frequently preferable to do this on a monthly or quarterly basis rather than annually.
- Lead Handling: If your agency lacks a formal lead handling process, even the best leads will not close. This only needs to be monitored and followed—it doesn’t need to be automated! Which producer will oversee an appointment once it has been made, and how will they follow up to guarantee the highest close ratio? Naturally, how will it be tracked as well.
- Appointment Setter: The appointment maker is last but certainly not least. Your lead initiative’s appointment maker will succeed or fail. The hiring, managing, and training of this resource is also a challenge for some agencies. Additionally, the majority of companies only hire one appointment setter, and according to industry standards, only one out of every three callers is likely to be successful in this demanding role. At a minimum, your appointment setter should have:
- Telemarketing experience
- Trucking insurance experience (or training)
- Call script training and practice
- Lead handling training
- A professional demeanor
- Ability to consistently deliver your call pitch (20 plus times per hour)
Trucking companies that have the necessary time, resources, and personnel can take this lead generation initiative internal. Those agencies that are unable to should think about outsourcing this chance to an experienced firm that generates trucking leads.