Say goodbye to no-shows

If customers always show up for your meetings, congrats! You’re living the dream so feel free to skip this week’s edition. But for most of us that’s just not reality.

1. Appointments keep getting pushed out to a future date,
2. you get last minute cancellations after waiting 5-10 minutes on Zoom, or
3. you simply get no-showed and never hear from them again.

Any of these familiar?

Good news is that there’s an easy fix, because the reasone you face these comes down to 5 things that we’ll cover in this post. 5 things you can fix today so the only time you get no-showed is if your customer is forced to take a sick leave.

That was my reality as a rep and I can’t wait to share it with you!

5 steps to avoid no-shows once and for all

1. Add a clear and compelling reason for joining

It shocks me to see how many times I’ve seen people complain about no-shows but don’t do the basics. I ask them:

Q: Did you include a clear goal in the invite?

A: No, they accepted the meeting so they know what the goal is!

Q: Did you include an agenda at least?

A: No, we’ll cover that together in the first 5 minutes.

Q: Did you at least explain who needs to be on the call and why?

A: Why would I do that when everyone accepted?

Don’t be like this person. Do this instead:

Let go of boring meeting invitations. Instead, phrase the meeting in terms of outcomes they can expect.

• increase reply rates for [company] by x%
• how [customer] moved from monthly to weekly product releases
• tips to avoid abandoned carts for [company]

Add a clear goal to the invite

What is the outcome your contact expects or wishes to see by the end of your meeting?

The higher up the chain you go the more crowded calendars get. And guess which meetings your contact will skip if there’s an overlap? The ones without context.

So add a single line reminding them why they agreed to take the meeting in the first place. If it’s important, worst case it’ll get pushed out but you won’t get no-showed.

Add a clear agenda

What talking points will you cover on your call to reach that outcome by the end?

A goal doesn’t mean much without a plan. Reassure your contact that you know what you’re doing and can deliver on that goal. Simple 3-5 talking points do the trick.

Make it clear who is needed and why

Do you have multiple attendees on the invite and one of them is the decision maker? You’d be surprised how many times the DM will delegate the meeting to their team.

Unless: you make it crystal clear why each invitee needs to be there and what they risk by not joining or not preparing.

If the topic is longer, consider adding a pre-read

What’s a pre-read? Its some info for context that attendees should catch up on so you don’t waste time covering them on the meeting. That way when you’re on the call you can get straight to the point.

Pro tip: add this pre-read as a trackable document so you know who prepared and who didn’t. This gives you a good idea how engaged each person is about solving the problem.

But doing these 5 things isn’t enough so here are 4 quick things you should also check off your list:

2. When booking the call

Ask for their:

1. name,
2. email, and
3. add a custom question.

That last one helps you write the goal and agenda. Here’s mine: “what made you want to book a meeting and what would you like to learn by the end of our call?”

Now, ever heard of micro-commitments? These are small steps that people can take that increase their openness to commit to something later in the future. Like this pro tip from Kacper Floryn:

add a simple checkbox with text that says: “by booking this meeting I acknowledge that I will be present or will give prior notice if I can’t make it. In the case of no-show without prior notice I accept that I may not be eligible for future appointments”.

Or something along those lines to manage expectations.

3. Don’t schedule too far ahead

This one’s a double-edged sword. It’s easier to say yes to something farther out in the future, but it also kills any urgency or need you managed to create.

Because of this I recommend scheduling meetings within a week but definitely not farther out than two weeks.

And if your contact books a meeting 2 weeks out? Send them an email confirming their appointment but ask if they’re available sooner (next 2-3 days). Worst case they say they’re fully booked, but at least you tried speeding up the deal. You also get a sense for whether there’s any urgency.

4. Use friction to incentivise showing up

This is a short one but one of the best things you can do to avoid last minute cancellations:

Get rid of the reschedule links. Like.. forever. The only way it should be possible to reschedule meetings is through DM.

Small thing but I experienced personally how even such little friction can be enough for contacts to go along with the original meeting.

5. Keep engagement high leading up to the call

Most scheduling tools like Calendly, Chili Piper, or the ones built into Hubspot and Apollo do these automatically, but worth checking:

Send an automated reminder the day before the meeting. You can optionally send another reminder an hour before the meeting. These little cues go a long way when people are booked back to back.

Pro tip: If the meeting is more than one week out, send a manual email reminder leading up to the call. This should be a copilot to the agenda in your invite.

Use it to emphasise why you’re doing the call and what they will gain, then add something of extra value. Something that shows how much effort you’re putting into giving them a good experience. People will at least want to reciprocate which makes it all the less likely that they’ll no-show you.

+1: date in, date out

The meeting is ending soon. You’ve earned your buyer’s interest. But as soon as they leave the meeting they’re going back to their busy day to day. And that’s when reps get ghosted. They’re left “just following up” for weeks on end trying to book that next meeting. And that’s if the prospect doesn’t realise that they don’t have a burning need after all.

So let’s avoid this altogether and set a timer for 5 minutes before your meeting ends. Use it to agree on next steps and find a time in the calendar together while you have them on the line.

But what if you do all these and still end up getting no-showed? Here are some rules to follow:

1. Send an email after 5 minutes saying: “are we still on for today, [name]?” I’ll be on Zoom: [zoom_link]
2. Never wait more than 12 minutes for a customer. Respect your time and move the meeting out to same time next day. This is your way of signalling to customers that you are equals in the conversation.
3. Lead with empathy: remember that reminder you sent 5-minutes in? Reply to that saying “I guess something urgent came up - don’t sweat it. I moved our slot to [time] on [date] so we have something in the calendar. Let me know if you have a conflict and we’ll find us another time.”

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