Why don’t meetings hold?

There are a lot of reasons why one meeting doesn’t hold (that wouldn’t necessarily make you want to improve your Meeting Show Rate). Here’s a few we’ve run into in our experience:

• Prospect didn’t realize they needed to join a conference line / video call
• Prospect had a last minute emergency / meeting
• Salesperson needed to reschedule, and prospect was unwilling / unresponsive

But these are edge cases, one-offs. If your Meeting Show Rate is struggling, it’s not because of calendar invites and last-minute emergencies.

Your prospects consistently don’t show up because…

A) They don’t care enough about the problem you solve

OR

B) You have failed to demonstrate adequately that buying from you is less painful/risky than ignoring the problem

If you’ve read our ebook on Market Domination, you’ll remember the number 8.5%. That’s the sliver of the market actively buying a solution like yours today. The rest are in various stages of consideration, but not necessarily ready to buy.

It only gets worse if you are selling a nice-to-have versus a must-have.

Salespeople can get tunnel vision about their products because they’re trained to believe that they can and should be the solution of choice for everyone in their market. That means we often throw our hands up in the air and blame the prospect when they no-show our call.

But think about it like this:

Is the problem you solve so significant to this person’s daily life that they would stay an extra 10 minutes after work to hear you out?

If the answer is no, they likely will let anything and everything get in the way of showing up to a sales call with you (P.S. they know it’s a sales call even if you call it an “introductory conversation” or similar).

The only way to solve this problem is to demonstrate through education that the solution (your solution) provides a significantly brighter future than ignoring the problem, with little risk to them.

Sure, I live every day with a little back pain and it’s not enough to see somebody about. But if you could hand me a pill I take one time to never have back pain again, along with credible testimonials, I’m going to sit down and hear you out (and probably buy!).

Fresh ideas

If you’re struggling with show rates and you need some fresh ideas, try the following:

1. Be sure to connect with prospects via LinkedIn and share relevant content indirectly (posting/reposting) and directly (DMs) that will help you highlight the current painful state of people ignoring the problem you solve and the future happy state of people who actively address the problem you solve.
2. One day before your meeting, send a reminder email with a video testimonial from someone in their industry or who is otherwise relevant to them.
   Draw the conclusion for them: “I thought this video would benefit our discussion tomorrow because, like you, Company X was just coming out of a merger and started to experience Problem Y.”

Need help?

If you have additional questions as to why your meetings aren’t holding and want to improve your Meeting Show Rate, we’d be happy to offer some advice. Contact us here.