Reading The Small Print

More times than I can count, I hear one of my prospects vent on how they were ‘burned’ by another company in my industry.  It really frustrates me to hear that so many companies do business with such little integrity and/or pride in their work product.  Of course I always recommend that a company read the small print of any contract, but why does there have to be small print?  Is there a reason businesses cannot be open about what they offer and what they can do?  Here are three of the most common “promises” I hear from prospects that did not read the “small print” before they engaged the wrong appointment setting company: 

• Promise:  We guarantee appointments!
  1. Burn:  “I was guaranteed x amount of leads and I got them… but the quality was awful!” 
  2. Our Response:  How can a company guarantee appointments without calling first?  So many factors go into a calling campaign such as the timing of the message, the brand identity of a product, etc.  Without actually making calls first, it is impossible for a company to guarantee you will get a certain number of appointments that are truly qualified.  Any company can say “we guarantee 50 appointments in 2 weeks” but Intelemark says, “We would rather set 10 highly qualified appointments with revenue potential than 50 appointments that will not be qualified and waste time and resources for your company.  Although we cannot guarantee the amount, we guarantee that we will do everything in our power to make your campaign as successful as possible…and you will get quality.”
• Promise: We develop your script!
  1. Burn:  “They developed our script but I don’t own it.  I have never seen or heard the script and do not have access to it.  I have no idea what the company is saying on my behalf”
  2. Our Response:  As an extension of your company, we absolutely believe you should own the script.  Not only will we collaborate with you on the script as we write it but you also get the final approval.  Furthermore, we monitor the message to your prospects and their responses; we will continue to perfect the script until the message received by your prospects is fruitful. 
• Promise:  We will provide your data at no cost to you!
  1. Burn:  “Sure, they provided the data but I do not have access to it.  When I asked for a list of the companies they were calling, they said they own the list.  How do I know they are not using the same list for my competitors?  How do I know that I am not calling the same companies on my own?  I cannot do a direct mail or email marketing campaign with any of these prospects.”
  2. Our Response:  We will purchase the data for you based on your criteria and you have full ownership of the list.  We do not re-use data for any other clients.  If, at any time, you want all your data back, we will provide it in quick time with all the updates we have made.  Not only do you get to keep your data but also it will always come back better because we update your prospects information on every call.  We also scrub your current prospects and clients from the list so that we are not duplicating efforts and/or annoying prospects and clients with multiple calls from different people.  

In summary, make sure to do your homework and read the “small print” if you have decided to outsource your appointment setting.  The company you choose is often the first impression of your company.  Intelemark definitely feels the responsibility of being a seamless extension of your sales team.  It is crucial to our collective success to make sure that you are getting exactly what you agreed to when you signed the dotted line.