The joy of scheduling a meeting during a B2B appointment-setting campaign can be short-lived if the prospect doesn’t show up for the call. How much time and resources do sales reps waste preparing for video and phone conversations that never occur?
Unfortunately, dropped appointments and no-shows are a reality of the B2B lead generation process, and avoiding them altogether is an impossible goal. A full calendar doesn’t necessarily equal genuine sales opportunities.
So how many dropped B2B appointments should you expect? It’s hard to say. The average number can be anywhere from 20 to 50 percent, depending on the industry and the title of the person you’re trying to reach. Which means that even in the best of circumstances, about one in five scheduled meetings goes unattended.
There are plenty of reasons for dropped appointments. Legitimate conflicts, such as personal emergencies or workplace crises, are inevitable. Sometimes, more important priorities end up taking precedence. In these cases, there is little the Business Development Representative who set the initial meeting could have done to increase the chances of the prospect showing up.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s a losing battle. There are multiple steps your callers can take to strengthen the quality of your sales appointments and reduce the number of no-shows. Here are five of them:
1. Only schedule meetings with qualified prospects
Sure, scheduling as many appointments as possible sounds like an admirable goal, but ultimately, the quality of the meeting is far more important than the quantity. Unless the person you’re speaking with has purchasing power or can strongly influence the sales process, any further conversations they have with your reps are unlikely to deliver ROI-positive results.
That’s if they bother to show up at all. If they’re not directly involved in purchasing decisions, it’s very possible they accepted the meeting simply to end the phone call and never had any intention of attending.
Before any calling campaign, it’s imperative to have a strong target list, so you’re confident you’re talking to the right people. Even then, no list is perfect. If it becomes apparent during the call that the person you’re speaking with isn’t a decision maker or strong influencer, it’s probably not worth scheduling an appointment with them. Hopefully, they’ll be able to refer you to someone else within the company, or at least bring them to the meeting.
2. Set clear expectations for the meeting
Helping prospects understand the value of speaking to your sales rep and exactly what will be discussed during the call can go a long way toward making sure they show up. This doesn’t mean you should present them with a full agenda (especially not during a cold call), but it does mean you should offer a general summary of the appointment and find out what they’re most interested in talking about.
For example: “The purpose of the call will be for Mary to tell you a little about more about our company and learn about your needs. Are there any specific concerns you want to ask her about? I’ll be sure to let her know.”
Not only does this make the prospect feel appreciated, but it helps the sales rep prepare for the call, increasing the odds of a productive appointment.
3. Don’t ask for too much time
Prospects are far more likely to show up for an appointment if they know in advance they only need to commit 15 minutes of their time. Asking for much more than that during a cold call is a recipe for disaster. Even if they agreed to a longer meeting, they’re more likely to change their mind about attending if they get to work and realize how packed their calendar is that day.
VSA recommends telling prospects: “The meeting should take about 15 minutes, but we schedule for 30 to allow time for questions.” That keeps their initial obligation to a minimum. If a prospect is truly interested, there will be plenty of opportunities for longer conversations later in the sales journey.
4. Ask the prospect to accept the meeting invite while still on the phone
This can be tricky, as prospects might be impatient to end the conversation, especially since they weren’t expecting your call. But whenever possible, send the invite with the link to the meeting while you’re still on the phone with them, and ask them to accept right then and there. That way, you at least know that the meeting is on their calendar.
Whether or not you’re able to do that, it’s important to also immediately send an email confirming the time and date of the appointment. You should also follow up with a reminder call and email, especially if the meeting is scheduled for more than a few days in the future (although the sooner the better when it comes to scheduling appointments, because it helps keep your company’s name top of mind).
5. Don’t treat a dropped appointment as a lost opportunity!
Just because someone doesn’t show up for a meeting doesn’t mean they’re no longer a viable prospect, especially if it was because of the aforementioned emergency or any other sort of unexpected conflict. In many cases, a meeting no-show is actually a more appealing target, and they should definitely be called back as soon as possible after the originally scheduled appointment.
That’s because they already agreed to a meeting once, so there’s at least some level of interest there. You also know you can get them on the phone, because you’ve done it at least once. Plus, it’s a natural conversation starter: “Hi, John, I see we were supposed to talk yesterday afternoon, and I figured something must have come up. When would be a good time to meet this week?”
Statistically, show rates for rescheduled meetings are higher than for meetings scheduled during cold calls, so it always pays to follow up.
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At VSA we take numerous steps to reduce the number of no-shows and ensure that we’re setting quality appointments for our clients’ sales reps. Every conversation that results in a scheduled meeting ends with a “wrap” that recaps the date and time of the call and probes for any specific concerns the prospect might have.
And if no-shows do occur, we have best practices in place to get the prospect back on the calendar as quickly as possible.
If your company is having trouble with dropped appointments, give us a call or send us an email. We promise we’ll show up for the conversation.