Even the most seasoned salespeople don’t have a 100% attendance rate on their discovery and prospect calls. A no-show once a week seems manageable, but depending on your business once a week could mean you’re losing out on a big chunk of revenue opportunity!
Not to mention, it’s always disappointing when someone cancels (or just doesn’t show up) to a meeting last minute. You’ve done your due diligence, prepped for the call, and then it all goes to waste in a matter of minutes.
Not to fret, as we have some tested methods (by us here at CoPilot AI) to get your attendance rate up in no time. Just follow our tips below:
1) Make the meeting agenda clear
It’s happened to all of us. You book a demo or discovery call with a “stranger” because you’re generally interested in learning about their product or service. But you end up spending 30-60 minutes trying to get off the phone with an annoying salesperson. What is the common indicator here? Your expectations for the call were not met.
For a salesperson, the key here is to outline your meeting agenda when the prospect books into the meeting, not after, and definitely not during the meeting. Your prospect will be much better prepared and you will both be aligned for a productive call if they know what they’ve signed up for and you do too.
2) Make scheduling easy
Please do not email me 10 times asking for a date and time that “works for me” and also “works for you”. According to Hubspot, sales people spend 21% of their day responding to emails which means anything you can do to help your prospect save time will be appreciated.
Unnecessary time spent scheduling a meeting, sending an email, checking your calendar is no longer needed with tools such as Calendly and many others mentioned here. A calendar booking tool syncs to your calendar and allows you to either share a link or landing page where your prospect can choose a time that works for them (and it will automatically present the times that work for you). It’s 2020, and with many turning to digital meetings, a calendar booking tool will go a long way. We swear by these simple scheduling tools so much, we’re even looking to build our own, (you can back it here).
3) Make reminder emails
Scheduling reminder emails seems like it could annoy a prospect, but we promise, they work. And in most cases as long as the message isn’t pushy, your prospect won’t mind. A good rule of thumb is to send two reminder emails or text messages prior to the scheduled call.
At CoPilot AI we recommend one reminder 24-hours in advance, and one reminder 30-min in advance. This way you’re top of mind for your prospect even if they’ve forgotten about the booking.
If you’re not already using a calendar automation tool (see number 2) then this will be quite tedious, but will help with attendance rates! In this case, create a couple email templates to use as your reminders, so you’re only having to switch out the details each time.
4) Make rescheduling easy
Don’t take it too personally if a prospect decides to cancel a meeting the day (or even hour) of the meeting. Especially in our economic climate - things can come up and not every cancellation is a complete snub. Be it personal, work related or otherwise.
The key here is the ease in which prospects can re-book into a time that suits them best. We recommend a calendar booking tool (again, see tip number 2).
5) Make sure you don't book too far in advance
Everyone’s done it. You’re about to go on vacation and in the midst of checking everything off the list, you book a bunch of meetings for your return. Only problem is, you return and forget what those meetings are about. On your end, you'll face more challenges moving your prospect along your funnel, as that initial urgency has long passed.
Unless your agenda is foolproof (see tip number 1) we encourage all our customers to never book out a prospect meeting past 1.5 weeks in the calendar. For the prospect this will help to avoid re-schedules, no-shows and prospects showing up to the meeting having no idea what they’ve signed up for.
No-shows are an unavoidable fact when it comes to booking prospects in meetings. But, if you follow the tips above, we promise your attendees will be better prepared for your meeting and your attendance rate will increase over time.
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