IT companies face a great challenge in engaging potential customers. Aside from creating an effective brand awareness campaign, these companies are also impelled to deliver quality communications that will push their audiences to purchase a service package, specifically IT consulting services which have seen a considerable rise in demand over the years.

To this end, effective lead generation and appointment setting are needed. An immediate boost in sales needs well-organized methods of acquiring high profile IT leads. If you are a company offering IT consulting services, being able to present that particular line of offers in a clear manner is essential to win sales appointments minus the hassle.

Clarity is not the only thing that IT service providers need to secure. Additional factors such as call time, client profile and marketing-sales infrastructure also have a hand at influencing buyer decisions. It is therefore important to set up a marketing program that marks these factors as high priority.

Call time

Aside from email, appointment setting makes full use of telemarketing to drive prospect interest. Phone engagements, due to the real-time convenience they offer to both seller and prospect, are still popular in terms marketing for IT. But let’s be real here: Not all companies in the industry are doing it right in picking the appropriate time and day to conduct a call. Decision-makers are practically busy people hence calling on the wrong occasion will more likely inconvenience them and make them turn down subsequent calls from you. Writing for Demand Media, Greg Brian quoted studies suggesting that lunchtime is the worst time to conduct a cold call while 8-9 am (when prospects arrive at work) and 4-5 pm (when they are about to call it a day) during workdays are the best.

Client profile

Prospects that bide well with your ideal client profile are more likely to set an appointment with you. They exhibit a high likelihood to buy because they correspond to the type of customers you want to pursue based on budget, location, job title, and company size. Having a well-defined client profile can help focus your lead generation and appointment setting efforts on winnable sales opportunities, so always keep tabs of your profiling activities.

Marketing-sales infrastructure

This pertains to implementing a lead management program. Basically, you would want to have a database that effectively scores leads based on your interactions with them. You would also want an effective system that manages your content, email and telemarketing campaigns, allowing you to identify high-value opportunities that your sales team can target. In this respect, you might want to apply marketing automation software. And since we are talking about selling IT consultancy services, you might as well take the familiar advice to outsource your marketing to a trusted and industry-competent IT lead generation company.

Learn more sales and marketing tips or get more qualified IT consulting leads.