If you are like me and carve out time from your schedule to work the phones booking appointments, you know how frustrating it can be when people don't show up. I'm not sure what the statistics are but if I book five meetings, there's a good probability that only three or four will actually keep their appointment.
Yes, there are legitimate reasons why people don't always keep their appointments. Emergencies happen. Cars break down, people get sick and a litany of other reasons can keep your prospect from seeing you. However, the reason that most often prevents me from seeing someone is that they forgot about it. Apparently, these folks don't think that the appointment is important enough to put in their calendar.
When you are "smiling and dialing" to fill your calendar, you can tell by their tone if someone is actually going to keep their appointment. If they say something like, "I may be busy but you can come by." In my opinion that doesn't sound like they are interested.
Just to let them know that I think it's important I will usually say "I'm putting it in my calendar right now." Hopefully they respond, "Me too!"
Calling to confirm your appointment ahead of time can work and many sales people will phone a day or two ahead of time. However, you will also get a lot of cancellations that way. Calling someone the day before to confirm will get result in "Yeah, let me get back to you." Those were the people that probably forgot or had no interest to begin with.
PRO TIP
A trick I learned years ago was to call the prospect about 15 minutes before the appointment. Instead of asking if our appointment is still on, I will say something along the lines of "I am on my way but traffic is heavy. I may be a few minutes late." Now they know you are coming and have been reminded. I've been able to hear a bit of panic in my prospect's voice as they remember they were supposed to meet with me.
Making and confirming appointments can be frustrating. Especially when people keep rescheduling. To remedy this problem, I have added the Calendly app to my websites. When a prospect (or client) schedules their own appointment this way the odds of them keeping the appointment increase dramatically. And the app syncs up with my Google calendar to block out any other appointments I may have. It's a great tool that I recommend to all.
Let your customer know that your time is just as valuable as theirs ahead of time but be ready for a few no-shows from time to time.
Chris Castanes is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. He's also the author of "You're Going To Be Great At This!", a humorous look at sales. For booking information, click here. He's also the president of Surf Financial Brokers selling life and disability insurance in several states.
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