You just found the internet’s best resource on how to turn leads into meetings.

On this page, you’ll find templates, pointers, and proven techniques we use every day to convert more leads into meetings.

Because RevBoss is expert at sales prospecting, we know the outbound process well. We know how to set appointments, and have more conversations with potential clients.

So we’ve compiled that knowledge here, to help you turn more outbound leads into meetings—and ultimately, into clients.

Without further ado, here’s our comprehensive resource on how to convert leads into meetings.

You’ve just started—or are about to start—doing outbound prospecting.

This means you’ve got some new goals for the business.

You may be a SaaS company, focused on providing more pipeline to your Sales reps.

Or you might be a 50-person marketing agency looking to expand beyond word-of-mouth, and prospecting in new markets is the way to level up.

Either way—once you have new leads coming in, having meetings with potential clients is the top priority.

Every lead is a potential client, but you must speak with them to begin a relationship and gain trust before you close the deal.

Sales prospecting (outbound) is a lot different than getting customers through word of mouth (inbound).

This is our best metaphor for understanding the difference between inbound and outbound.

Inbound is the Luxor - coaxing customers in with its "I'm right here" light.

Customers that arrive via inbound channels are more eager to chat, because they were actively searching for a solution. These potential clients saw your light beckoning from the dark and said, “Yes! I would like to talk!”

Outbound is more like a search party, using data and a strategic process to seek out new customers in a particular area.

Outbound is a proactive approach, where you’re reaching out to customers who (for the most part) have never heard of you, so the relationship starts in a very different place versus inbound.

In the case of outbound sales prospecting, you have to be more persistent in reaching out to your leads. Depending on the individual and their business, it may be harder to turn an outbound lead into a meeting than you’re accustomed to.

(Remember: these leads aren’t walking in your front door asking to chat. You found them and are trying to engage them in conversation.)

That’s why you have to be persistent when responding to outbound leads, and you have to be willing to listen when you speak with them.

Your ultimate goal should be to have a genuine conversation about their business, not yours.

You want to understand what their most pressing problems are, and see if your product or solution can solve one or more of those problems.

When you get a “bite” through outbound prospecting, the goal isn’t to sell them your product or service.

The goal is to sell the first meeting.

With outbound sales prospecting, you’ve already filtered everyone for industry and company size, so you don’t need to qualify your product fit as much as you do their timing.

Chances are, you can help them. You just need to build the relationship, and be strategic about the timing of your asks.

On first contacting a new prospect, you should be in helping mode—not sales mode. You need to ascertain a few things before you jump in to make the sale.

First and foremost, you want to see if this potential customer fits into your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). Not only will this expedite the conversation, but you’ll know how best to help them based on your previous experience with similar clients.

Second, you want to see if the problem they’re having is one you can solve. Perhaps this person is simply too close to the issue, and can’t see that your services wouldn’t help them at all. That’s the last type of client you want to take on, so be confident you can help.

And third, can this client pay for your product or services over a period of time? You want to get a basic understanding of their financial situation to understand how best you can help.

Once you’ve qualified a new lead on each of these three parameters, you can start to sell them.

Now here are a few tips on how to do that—with persistence.

New Section -- Selling the First Meeting

How do you sell the first meeting?

You may not hear back from a lead after your initial reply. But that doesn’t mean you should throw up your arms and quit.

You just have to be persistent, and really dig to see if what you’re offering is a priority for this person and their business.

Sometimes it takes four cold emails to get someone’s attention. Sometimes five, because they were on vacation.

You never know the exact situation of a prospect, so don’t take it personally if they don’t respond right away. All you have to do is be persistent till they do.

There are statistics on this that bear out the reality of following up at least five times. Here’s a graphic that lays out the percentages.

Looking at these stats, we can infer a few things.

If 92% of salespeople quit reaching out after 4 emails, and 80% of sales require a 5th email, then those remaining 8% of salespeople are closing 4 out of every 5 deals.

Crazy to think it takes that many follow ups, but again, we don’t know the situation of our prospect. We just know that persistence is key.

Persistence may be the single biggest factor in converting outbound leads into closed deals.

Be sure that any outbound campaign you’re running has a series of at least 5 emails.

It’s a lot easier to follow up five times if you have an email template you can reference. So we created exactly that.

This cold email template is one we use in our own sales prospecting, and it’s helped us reach thousands of potential clients.

You’ll notice we included some callouts throughout the email cadence, to give you helpful tips that we’ve seen work across tens of thousands of emails.

Even though this resource is all about converting leads into meetings via email, it’s perfectly fine to call your prospect on the phone in hopes of catching them in a free moment. You can also send a LinkedIn connection request or direct message, which we mention below as well.

However you reach out, the goal is the same—get that meeting.

Use this cold email template below, or reference as an example any time you’re trying to convert a lead into a meeting.

There are five cold email example total, with pointers:

Sent the following day

Sent 3 days later.

Sent 4 days later.

Sent 4 days later.

To get consistent outbound results, you’ll need to set up an email campaign like this one, with at least four emails (though we recommend five).

Feel free to steal language from the examples above, but realize that your “in”—your reason for contacting this person—will shift depending on what audience you’re targeting.

But this is a great resource to get you started on turning outbound leads into meetings.

If you’re looking to have more conversations with potential clients, reach out to us at RevBoss.

We’re pretty good at sales prospecting, and we do outbound the right way.