Life happens. Things come up. People miss appointments. Even the best appointment reminders can’t prevent every no-show or cancellation.
What matters is not that everyone shows up, but that you keep following up.
Here’s how to improve the process of getting those leads and customers back on the calendar.
Send multiple reminders beforehand
No, this post isn’t about getting people to show up the first time. (Though I’ve covered that in detail before.) Sending multiple reminders benefits you not just with getting people to show up.
This helps keep them accountable and engaged, making them more likely to follow up and reschedule on their own if they do need to cancel. At the very least, you stay top of mind and it’s not a surprise when you follow up after the missed meeting.
JobNimbus saw this first-hand when using Skipio to automatically send demo reminders. Prospects started initiating rescheduling conversations with no prompting from sales reps.
Have templated responses ready for no-shows and ghosting
Create prewritten templates that you can quickly customize and send if someone cancels or simply doesn’t show up. These can be text message templates, email templates, or voicemail scripts.
Right when someone cancels, you then have a message ready to send with options for rescheduling. This makes it as easy as possible for people to meet with you in the future.
If someone no-shows without any kind of notice, follow up within an hour of the time you were supposed to meet. Again, give them options for rescheduling.
Automatically send follow-up messages
If you’re lucky, someone will reschedule when you reach out right after you were supposed to meet. Don’t stop following up after you try sending those immediate check-ins though.
For those times when people aren’t engaging after cancelling or no-showing, schedule follow-up messages to drip out. Your goal is simply to get a reply. You can then (hopefully) turn that reply into a conversation about rescheduling.
This requires integrating your email and text messaging tools with your calendar. Skipio does this most commonly through Zapier.
The Krista Mashore Coaching sales team took a whole list of leads who no-showed or cancelled and got enough of them back on the calendar to generate an additional $49,000 in just 30 days. All because they didn’t give up on the people who went “cold.”
Change your meeting offer
Depending on the reason someone cancels or no-shows, adapt the form or function of the meeting. For instance, if you know someone cancelled because they keep a really tight schedule, propose solutions like these.
Shorten the time commitment
You originally scheduled a 30-minute meeting? Specifically offer to do a 10-15 minute call and create/share a shortened agenda.
Send a video
Instead of trying to fit a meeting into both of your schedules, send them a video that they can watch on their own time. Tools like Quickpage make this a cinch. But keep any video to 10 minutes tops and of course keep following up after you send it.
Meet with someone else
Ask if it would be easier to meet with someone else from their team. If there’s another person they can send in their place, you still get the meeting and they still get the info. Then, strategically plan your follow-up to make sure the right info is communicated back to them.
The fortune is in the follow-up
Everything with scheduling comes back to your follow-up. Without a clear plan, people end up falling through the cracks. Give yourself the best chance of meeting with prospects and customers by strategically planning your communication and utilizing convenient messaging tools.
Skipio helps you design and execute simple yet effective follow-up campaigns. Start now with one of our four plans!
