How Canceled Appointments Can Improve Your Sales

On Thursday morning Jill, a sales person, opened her e-mail and found the following messages in her in-box.

Jill, I am going to be out of town on business tomorrow and won’t be able to keep our scheduled appointment. I will e-mail you when I am ready to reschedule. Thanks very much. StephanieJill, We are on some temporary cut backs through the end of our fiscal year, which goes through December. This includes minimizing outside contractors, vendors and suppliers where possible until the next fiscal year planning/budgeting process is finalized.

So I feel that we should put anything we do together on hold, and I will remind myself to get in touch with you mid-January to determine if we are able to work with you. Thanks again for your time and I apologize for any inconvenience.         Speak to you in a few months. Best Regards, Gloria

Jill, I had a chance to talk to the owner of the company yesterday, and at this time we will not be pursuing additional vendors or suppliers. I do appreciate your time and valued information. I look forward  to hearing from you in the future & possibly pursuing this again at a later date.”  Sincerely, Fred

To say the least, Jill found herself feeling angry. Three “prospects” had just canceled on her.

This was in addition to the two people who canceled out on Wednesday and the third person who didn’t keep her scheduled conference call. (This was the 2nd time he had stood Jill up.)

Jill is a financial planner. She’s been in the business for several years and has been doing quite well, but knew she could do much better.

She had asked me to help her grow her business, close more sales, and make more money. She’s working on only two-cylinders and knows that if she can become more focused she could easily double her income.

As Jill was telling me her tales of woe, and we were discussing her current situation, I realized that she was looking at these cancellations from the wrong perspective.

The wrong point of view.

These people were doing her a favor.

They had already made up their minds that they weren’t interested. By canceling their meetings they were giving Jill more time to get on the telephone and find a better prospect.

Someone who is interested in having her help them… TODAY!

As I always say, “If you’re going to lose, lose early. I hate chasing someone for 30, 60, 90 days, or longer and then find out they aren’t going to buy.” How about you?

Ever Have An Easy Sale??”Jill, have you ever had an easy sale?” I asked.

“You call someone on the phone and he says, ‘I’m glad you called. I’ve been thinking about reviewing my financial planning and would like to discuss it with you.’ Please tell me a bit more about what it is you do.”

“Yes.” Jill replied. “That happened to me just last week.

“I called on Tom and he told me that he had gotten married a year ago, his wife Caroline was expecting their first child in six months, they had just bought a new house, and he had gotten a promotion.

“A lot had happened in his life.”

“So how hard did you have to work to close the sale?”

“This was easy.” Jill beamed.

“He came over to my office and we talked about his situation and closed the sale on the spot.”

“How did it feel?”

“Great!” Jill gushed.

This is the kind of experience you want to have day-in, and day-out. This shouldn’t be a once-in-a-blue-moon experience. This should be business as usual for you.

But it only happens when you spend your time looking for new customers. When you’re calling the same people over and over again – especially those who cancel appointments – you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Look for people who want to say YES!

Relationships! Relationships! Relationships! Business is built upon relationships. Not PowerPoint presentations. Not fancy brochures.

Relationships are built by solving problems. Adding value. Providing solutions.

After speaking with these people, they decided that they didn’t want to explore having a relationship with Jill. It was time to move on.

Why am I sharing with you Jill’s “tales of woe”?

Because we all waste hours of time each day trying to develop relationships with people who don’t understand the value we have to offer them.

For one reason or another, they aren’t open to even hearing about what it is we do, and how we can be of help to them.

Two Questions
So let me ask you two questions:

* What do you do when someone cancels a meeting? Call them  over, and over, and over again to try and reschedule?

* Are you afraid to call and confirm an appointment/meeting because the prospect might say “I’m not interested.” and  cancel the meeting?

Here’s something to think about:  LET THEM GO. FIND A BETTER PROSPECT!

Life is too short – Look at this from another perspective:  Life is just too short to spend hours of time trying to convince someone to buy something that they just don’t want, aren’t in the mood to buy, or aren’t interested in.

Stop trying to force square pegs into round holes.

I recently did a program for a company, and one of the participants said with a great deal of pride: “It took me 10 years to get my biggest client.” As I thought about it, how much time, effort, and energy was invested over those 10 years? And how many other clients could have been acquired if the same time, effort, and energy   had been invested in them?

Yes, I know that thousands of sales books walk you thru the steps of overcoming objections, but that comes with a price. It takes a lot of hard work and effort to make the sale, and more often than not, the sale doesn’t get made.

(And even if the sale is made, do you have a long-term relationship, or did you just close a sale? Especially if you had to dramatically cut your price.)

Spend your time looking for people who want to develop a relationship with you.
Life is a whole lot more fun, and financially rewarding, when you find people who can see the benefits and advantages and value of working with you. And you’ll also get more sales, that way.