Whats the Objective of Your 1st Sales Appointment?

Have you defined what you want to happen at the conclusion of your 1st appointment? Only then can you actually set up a proficient sales methodology to achieve the defined objective more times than not. And with a pre-defined objective to your 1st appointment you can (1) set a realistic benchmark of success and (2) measure the outcome. It becomes part of your sales performance scorecard.

What is a 1st appointment to proposal ratio? Its simply how many times you gain commitment with your prospect to take the next step, as outlined by your sales process.
Depending on your solutions-based product or service and your sales methodology, your Next step may be one of the following:

An on-site demonstration
A trial period of your widget
A tour of your operations or manufacturing facility
A no-obligation survey
An evaluation and side-by-side comparison, apples to apples
A solution-based evaluation, apples to oranges

Whatever your Gateway is, be sure to attach a business rule and definition to it, and then most importantly measure it.
For example, lets look at a telecommunications company that provides voice, data and wireless services to their customer base. The objective of their first appointment is to gain commitment from their Target prospect to perform a diagnostic survey of their current services as it relates to their overall business imperatives and financial success factors for the current year and bring them back a Blueprint of ROI based solutions.

With their 1st appointment objective Gateway defined, they come to a decision to measure that gateway by having the target prospect sign a release form that enables them to contact their current service provider and request a specification report around line, data and feature connectivity.
The advantage of defining and measuring the first Gateway is that it will provide you with a Reality Mirror of how competent you are with the initial phase of your sales process. So if you have set a realistic benchmark company-wide of a 60% 1st Appointment to Proposal ratio and you have individuals below it, you can pro-actively provide them with targeted coaching and support tools to help them achieve the standard benchmark. And that drives more revenue.

If I walk into a sales division and diagnose their 1st appointment to proposal ratio is below 60%, I immediately know up to 5 specifics:

1.They are not calling on the Highest appropriate level of contact
2.They are not calling on the right type of company by industry or application
3.They have not defined a 1st appointment objective (A Gain Commitment Gateway)
4.They have no message or are poor at communicating the message
5.They are selling their services instead of selling the diagnostic steps in the Process and backing it up with 3rd party validations

The first two factors are directly related with whom you decide to call on.
You probably know who uses your product or service, but you might need some business acumen training to better understand the critical financial success indicators of your prospect parallel to their Front Burner business objectives.

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