Canceled Appointments

One of the biggest frustrations we have as sales people is canceled appointments or no shows.

You get a prospect to agree to an appointment, and then they don’t show.

This happens because we haven’t yet learned to lock appointments down.

Follow this 3 Step process to help prevent appointment cancellations and no shows.

1. Ask for the appointment - On average it takes 4 attempts of asking for the appointment to get an agreement to meet.
   

2. Set the appointment time - Give options: "Does 2:00 work or would 4:00 work better?" Giving options narrows down choices for them and allows the conversation to progress easier and faster toward meeting face to face.
   

3. Lock it down - When appointments don't show up, don’t make the customer wrong. Ask yourself what you can do to ensure this doesn’t happen. Start with you. Work on confirming appointments by locking it down: After you make the appointment time and date, ask the prospect, “Would there be any reason you would change your mind about this decision?” or “Would there be any reason you couldn’t make it?”

Locking it down

This checks for unspoken objections, and ensures that a transaction has been truly agreed upon.

You’re not alone on this, even great sales people complain about the buyer who pulls a no-show.

Better to find the considerations now. This close, typically, is not risked by inexperienced salespeople as they typically set the appointment and then spend hours preparing and working for the appointment with nothing but hope and wishes that they all show up. Avoid this by locking them down.

Protect against the no-shows!

I personally like, “Is there anything short of a nuclear meltdown why you wouldn’t show up at 4:00 tomorrow afternoon?”

This may seem extreme, but it often gets a laugh and it works.

#appointments #scripts