Sales Appointment No Shows - A bad problem getting worse

In the past 30 days, I have turned up an internal lead generation team for 3VLSI. This means I have 2-3 individuals working full time to schedule initial appointments between prospective clients and myself.

Setting qualified appointments is a straightforward process because it is one of the core services we deliver for our clients. Not surprisingly, our folks are very good at this and I have been on eight or more initial meetings each week.

This initiative has re-acclimated me with what’s happening on front lines as well as revealed an increasingly challenging phenomenon in the world Demand Creation selling.

Here is the news flash: Corporate America is running late!

Ok so that is not exactly surprising news but it is a fact that people are running more and more late all the time.

Specifically, initial appointment attendees (my prospects) are showing up to scheduled call an average of 12 minutes late. This is up from an average of 7 minutes late roughly a year ago. [Yes we really do track this stuff!]

While this may not seem like a big deal; it has a significant impact on something we (and our clients) care about: the appointment no-show rate. In some cases our appointment no-show rate has jumped from 85% to almost 50% and I suspect (ok…I know) the growing tardiness phenomenon and sales person behavior have everything to do with it.

By way of explanation: If I have an appointment scheduled for 11am and call at the agreed upon time, roughly 5% of scheduled participants will pick up the phone…the rest go to voice mail. Why? The answer is simple…they are running late from their last meeting. If I call back in 12 minutes (which used to yield a 70% or more answer rate) I now reach less than 50% of my targets. A certain percentage (typically 5-10%) will call me back while the rest simply move on to their next meeting – I am just a vendor after all.

So what to do? Times have changed and sales professionals must adapt. My current best practice includes the following:

1) Call at the appointed hour…expect voice mail and leave a message that says something like: “This is Townsend from 3VLSI calling in for our scheduled 11am call. I am assuming I am catching you running from another meeting and will try you back in 5-7 minutes. You can also reach me on…..”

2) Call back at 7 minutes past the hour. If they answer…rock on! If not, hang up.

3) Call back again at 13 minutes past the hour. This should significantly up your show rate. If they don’t answer, leave a second voice mail that says: ”This is Townsend once again trying you once again for our scheduled 11am introduction call. I am sorry we were not able to connect and assume you must have been pulled away to other more urgent matters. I am still looking forward to connecting with you live to introduce Three Value Logic Sales Institute and myself. Please expect a call from my sales assistant to reschedule based on our availability sometime over the next week or so. You can also reach me on…..”