I know that we all have those prospects who are always no show to their appointments. It’s frustrating and can feel like a waste of time, but it’s important to remember that every “no” is one step closer to a “yes”. With that in mind, here are my top four tips for handling cancellations gracefully: I hope they help!
Unfortunately, people sometimes cancel appointments or don’t show up. This is part of doing business. There are some things you can do to handle this when it happens. It’s important that you don’t waste your time. And you also want to get prospects to rebook and buy what you’re selling. People sometimes forget, even though you remind them and do everything you can to follow up.
Here are my four tips on how to handle cancellations and no-shows when they happen in your business
1. Automate Rebooking
This may seem a little basic, but it is amazing how many people have not set this up in their calendar system. It’s easy for people to reschedule appointments using an online calendar system. You can set up a link on the reminder so that they can easily rebook within a certain amount of time in their own time.
This way, you don’t have to worry about making phone calls going back and forth. They can just click on the button, reschedule it easily, and you still have the appointment.
2. A Cancellation Policy
This should state the expectations when somebody has booked an appointment with you.
Make sure you tell your prospects about your cancellation policy when they first book an appointment. This can be a short statement at the bottom of their appointment form.
For example, you can say something along the lines of, “Appointment cancellations inevitably do happen. We require 24-hour notice; otherwise, you will be charged for the appointment,” or whatever your company’s policy is.
I always like to add that if they are a no-show or cancel at the last minute, they are taking time away from somebody else who could use my help, adding a little bit of guilt by saying, “Please give us 24-hour notice; otherwise, we aren’t able to offer this to somebody else who could use our help.”
A little verbiage like that will now trigger a little common decency in their brain so they actually take advantage of the 24-hour cancellation policy. If someone cancels an appointment less than 24 hours before it is supposed to take place, they will be prompted to reschedule. If they do not reschedule within 24 hours, you will be notified so that you can book someone else into that time slot.
3. Block Times for Appointments
You might think, “Yeah, I block out times. I’m available 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday to take appointments.”
If you make appointments for people to come see your house at different times on different days, it can be difficult to schedule things around when they’re coming. For example, if someone books a 30-minute appointment at 2 p.m. on Thursday but you’d like to take a break or go work out, it becomes a little complicated.
Then you may have moments when you think, “Oh my gosh, now I have this two o’clock appointment. I better rush to the office.”
Then you make the phone call, and when you do, nobody’s there. Now you’ve just wasted all this time when you could have been doing something else.
I like to set specific times for appointments during the week, in blocks of two hours. That way, if someone cancels, I still have time to do other things. I can do more follow-up and outreach or listen to a podcast. That way, I’m not wasting time waiting for people.
When I was doing telephone sales, I used to have around five or six hours of phone calls lined up three days a week. Nearing the end of that shift, I was getting a little tired, and often I’d actually wish the last person would be a no-show so I could leave early and do something else.
I want to share with you a copy of my How To Increase Your Appointment Show Rate PDF that goes through the messaging and sequence I use when booking clients. This is so they get excited about actually showing up for their appointment, reducing no-shows and cancellations! If interested, click here and grab yourself some tips on how to keep hot prospects sitting and ready to buy from you.
4. Contact 5 More Times
You want to put prospects back into your follow-up-follow-through process as if they were still fresh leads.
What I do at my call center when we get notified of a no-show or a cancellation is put them into a special new funnel that gives them five more calls over the next five days to attempt to rebook them.
My thought process is that when somebody cancels or no-show for an appointment, it usually takes 8–10 touches to get them on the phone. If they’re committed but have lost track of time and need another push before showing up, we’ll try one more reminder call until we succeed in booking a new session with them.
It seems like five calls over five days is a good number. If somebody has to take care of an emergency, they’ll have time to respond to text messages or voicemails. They can also let us know what happened and why they missed their appointment. Then they can rebook it.
For the no-shows, on the other hand, they’re going to go through the same 5-day process, and then we’re going to expire that lead. Then we’ll know they weren’t a good lead, to begin with. Additionally and best of all, our clients aren’t spending the time to try to follow up with these leads, reschedule, and everything else because we’re doing it all for them.
Show you Care through your process
If you don’t have the staff to do it, I highly suggest you outsource it. Outsourcing will help make sure that potential buyers who may have been interested are contacted and followed up with even if they didn’t show up for their first appointment.
If someone doesn’t show up or cancels, you should try to reach out to them again over the next five days. If you don’t hear back from them after that, you can stop trying to reach out to them. It’s possible that something happened and they won’t be able to come.
So think about how you’re messaging them when you care enough to follow up to try to rebook the consultation. You are telling your clients that you provide great customer service. This is because you have put in place a process to follow up with all the prospects that come in.
The right patients and the right clients of yours are going to appreciate that follow-up-and-follow-through process. The wrong people are going to opt-out of the process.
I know all too well how frustrating it can be when your clients cancel at the last minute or simply don’t show up. However with my help in putting together a process for avoiding these issues altogether then there’s nothing stopping us from having flawless client engagement every single time. I am here to assist. Give me a call today to schedule an impact call. During this we can discuss your specific needs and create a plan tailored just for you.
