Lost time…

It doesn’t matter if you are going to your prospects or they are coming in to you.  A missed appointment is a great way to lose not just a sales opportunity and time, but also morale and productivity in general, whether it’s you as the owner or someone on your team who gets stood up.  It’s easy to shrug it off and tell yourself that you can’t control these things…it’s just the way some people are.

But, don’t believe that…

You have more influence than you believe.  Take a closer look at your conversion system and you will see that tweaking your sales process by adding the right language in the right place will improve your results.  And when you understand how simple it can be, you’ll be ready to change your scripting to get your prospects to respect your time.

The tweak is to get your prospect to make a public commitment.

A simple scripting change makes all the difference…

Gordon Sinclair was a restaurateur in Chicago with a problem.  Even though his reservation bookings were routinely full, about 30% of them never showed up.  Looking for a way to stop the resulting losses, he decided to make a change in the script his receptionists were using when the set the reservations.

When making a reservation, the receptionist would arrange the time and date details and then say, “Please call us if your plans change.”  Gordon’s approach was to train his team to make a simple change to that phrase.  The new phrase was, “Will you agree to call us if your plans change?” followed by a pause to wait for a response.  The amazing result is that this small change cut no-shows to 10%.  Why?

Knowingly or not, Gordon struck upon a way to obtain a public commitment from his customers.  And when we make a public commitment, we are much more likely to follow through on keeping it. (This is also why writing down and sharing your goals with others can be so effective).

Adopt this script now…”Will you agree to call me if your plans change?”  Then you must wait for a response before speaking. 

When your prospect responds with that promise, you just increased his or her commitment to you.

Implement…

If you or your sales team has lost time on no shows, build this step into your sales process, train them on the technique and measure the results.  It’s not hard to make a small change that gets great results.