Improving the show rate for meetings.
I used to think this was just a matter of a better reminder sequence… I was very wrong!
My number one tip for improving your show rate: book better people.
Let me explain what I mean.
Several years ago I was looking at partnering with another company. They’d carved out an interesting little industry for themselves, and they’d hired cold callers to set initial meetings for their reps.
So one day, while I was exploring the partnership, I tagged along with one of their reps to see what it was all about.
Every single meeting he had that day was garbage.
The cold callers had basically either made up the meeting entirely, or they’d talked to the person but the person never expressed any real interest.
One person told us, “I’m on vacation. I told them that.”
There’s this whole problem in the industry where any contact gets treated like, oh, clearly they’re interested.
They’re not.
What I’ve found is that improving your show rate comes down to taking the time to find out if the person is actually interested before the meeting ever hits the calendar.
I know, I know. Everybody wants the sequence. The message. The reminder cadence.
But if you have to figure out after the fact whether the person is really going to show up, you’ve already lost the meeting.
We send out a calendar invite, and once they accept, we let whatever reminder settings they already have on their calendar do the work.
When you’re working with professionals in white collar industries, most people are like me: calendar sitting on the side of the screen, letting me know I’ve got X number of minutes before I have to go. It runs my life. (Industries like construction and automotive can be a little more chaotic.)
Get a real meeting on the calendar with someone who actually wants to be there, and you don’t have to worry about any of this.
But if all you care about is getting that number on the calendar, pushing and pressuring people into meetings, your no-show rate is going to skyrocket. They were never interested in meeting you in the first place. They just wanted you to go away and saying “yes” was the fastest way to get rid of you.
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