One of the questions I am asked very often during my Sales Master Classes is ‘should I reconfirm the appointment the day before or on the morning of the appointment and before I leave for the meeting?’
If you have already confirmed the appointment when you first made it, either in writing by snail mail or e-mail, then my answer is an emphatic ‘NO’, and here is why.
There is only one reason you could have for doing so which is to avoid making a journey to visit your prospect, only to find they are either not there or not available and you would therefore have a wasted journey. The danger of re-confirming is that you give them the opportunity to cancel.
I am the first to admit that in my early days as a salesperson, I used to re-confirm the meeting the day before. When I did that, I very often had the prospect say something like “I’m so pleased you called. I was just about to call you and tell you something really important came up and I can’t make it. Can you call me next week to re-appoint?” When I did call again the following weekI was very often unable to get through to them, and if I did, I frequently had to re-sell the appointment all over again.
I keep meticulous notes of just about everything that is related to selling activities. I learned that from Frank Bettger in his book titled ‘How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success In Selling’. That was written in 1949 and I still think it is amongst the best salesbooks ever written. So I started to track the results of what happened when I did reconfirm appointments and what happened when I did not. These are the results:
Out of 620 sales appointments I made during the course of one year and confirmed at the time of making them, I reconfirmed 310 and just turned up for the other 310.
Of the 310 I reconfirmed, 65 told me they were unable to keep the appointment.
Of those 65, I was only able to reappoint 15. So I had 260 meetings.
Of the 310 I did not reconfirm, 9 were not available when I arrived. I reappointed all but one. So I had 309 meetings.
My closing ratios were identical from both groups.
If you would prefer to keep your own records for a while, then please do so. Or you can take my experience as your guideline and do as I do – NEVER RE-CONFIRM. If your prospect needs to cancel or postpone your meeting, most will be polite enough to call you or have someone call on their behalf.
I agree in general principal, but several years ago had made an appointment with a friend with whom I had done business in the past. I had telephoned his office to reschedule and was assured that his diary had been updated and he would be told. On arrival at his office on the date and time agreed, having driven over 120 miles and got stuck in traffic, a round trip of over 5 hours, I was told he was in a meeting and would be unavailable all day. He did come out and speak to me, but to assure me that he had not been told of the rescheduling and thus was unable to see me that day. Needless to say I didn’t schedule another meeting with him!
Actually, I couldn’t disagree more! Though your stats are interesting.
Once the prospect has invited me in I always ask is there anything that could crop up to cause him to cancel or miss the meeting, perhaps if they are a bit vague, then suggest they check their diary, and move the meeting if need be.
I have never had a cancelled meeting using this approach.
Excellent post Bruce. “Do not confirm sales meetings the day before because it makes it too easy to cancel.” Your records are very convincing.
Can I please add something to your excellent point? When someone reconfirms a meeting with me it almost feels as if they are mistrusting my organisational skills or my ethics. Almost as if they are expecting the minimum.
There has been a lot of research showing that, if you expect the best of people, that is the side of them that they show you.
When I set up sales meetings it is always in the view of working together as partners to solve their issues. In other words I aim to create a higher level relationship. It pays off very well in terms of results and certainly makes sales meetings far more interesting.
Thank you for your excellent post. Jane