Thought leadership

It’s 11:12am. You’re staring blankly at yourself in the Zoom window wondering where it all went wrong. You have been no-showed yet again.

No-shows are brutal for sales teams: lost productivity, hurt morale, missed new pipeline.

So how can we handle them and keep our show rates high?

Preventing No-Shows

You know the old saying: “Prevention is better than a cure.”

That applies especially to no-shows.

So before we get into what to do if you get no-showed, let’s talk about some strategies to ensure we’re setting ourselves up for the highest likelihood of a buyer showing up to a booked meeting.

Don’t Book Calls Further Than 2 Weeks Out

When you book meetings, ensure you’re not booking them too far in the future.

If anything, ensure you’re using strategies to push the buyer to book a meeting as soon as possible.

Set up your booking link so that meetings can’t be booked out too far.

When suggesting times to meet with a prospect via cold call, email, or social, only provide days and times within the next week.

Some prospects won’t be able to accommodate that and that’s fine, but make meetings booked further out an exception.

The longer the time between when the meeting is booked and when it takes place, the greater the likelihood the prospect forgets, loses interest, has other priorities come up, or even departs the company.

There’s data that shows a direct correlation between show rates going down and the meeting occurring further in the future.

If someone won’t agree to a meeting soon, it’s worth understanding why before agreeing to a meeting in a month.

Avoid Booking Meetings at Inconvenient Times

Always book meetings with your buyer’s time zone and schedule in mind. Try not to make them too late or too early.

Also, avoid booking meetings at historically busy times. This will depend on who you sell to, but booking meetings first thing on a Monday morning or last thing on a Friday afternoon is a recipe for a meeting to be rescheduled or no-showed.