Booking Sales Meetings With Prospects & Making Sure They Show Up

One of the main goals of prospecting is booking sales meetings with prospects where you can put your sales skills to work and convert them to paying customers. However, sometimes even after going through the initial stages of arranging a meeting, getting a reply to your cold email, and going through the discovery call without a hitch, the prospect still ghosts you. Read on about what you can do to lower the chances of that happening to you.

Why your prospects might be ghosting you?

There are plenty of reasons why a prospect can decide to drop off from the conversation, and it happens a lot more often than you think. Sales reps waiting too long to schedule the meeting, not engaging the prospects and keeping the conversation going, or not following through quickly are some of the main reasons why your prospects decided to stop talking.

On the other hand, sometimes things just happen outside of their control. In other words, life happens. Kids, other priorities, or more important meetings. Naturally, these are things neither of you has control over, so it’s best to focus on the things you can improve on your end.

If they ghosted you due to one of the reasons above, but they’re interested, they’ll get back to you. If not, then they weren’t all that interested, to begin with, in what you have to offer.

Prospect ghosting: Here are several more reasons why your prospects are ghosting you and how to deal with it.

How to make sure the prospect follows through

Most sales reps can easily relate, as they have experienced getting ghosted a couple of times in the course of their selling. So, don’t worry, especially if you’re new to B2B sales. Just be sure that it doesn’t happen constantly otherwise, you have a problem and it means that you’ll have to switch things up and change your sales approach. Here are some key areas where you can start and see if you’re doing them right.

Get a sales mentor to help you

We all had to start from somewhere, and it really helps to have someone to guide you. An experienced salesperson has seen it all and knows how to get the prospect’s attention and keep them in the conversation. If you have someone on your sales team that can act as a mentor, to give you tips on how to improve your outreach and shadow your calls and help you to handle questions and objections better.

Experience isn’t everything, however. Another option is to see how the rest of your sales team is doing. While some sales reps are good with email campaigns, others feel more at home while on a call with a prospect. So, talk with your team and ask for their assistance if you feel that you really need it.

Bonus tip: Check out the Sales.Rocks Academy for courses that can help your selling.

Measure their level of interest

Trust your sales instincts and get a feel of where the prospect is in terms of interest in what you’re offering them. It is important to get a feel of whether they have a vested interest in the conversation. Based on their level of interest, this gives you a way in later down the line to make your sales pitch when the opportunity arises.

Understanding their level of interest tells you how urgent the challenges they’re facing are. The greater the challenges, the higher the interest. So, pay attention to the details and how involved they are.

Bonus tip: Qualify your prospects properly during the discovery call.

Schedule the meeting as soon you can

One of the most common reasons why a prospect leaves the conversation is because the sales rep schedules the call too long after the last engagement, making the call feel like an afterthought when it should be the last piece of the puzzle to close the deal.

This one is an easy fix. Schedule the call with your prospect as soon as you can, while you’re still on their mind and you have the advantage of urgency. Remember, timing is crucial. The more time that passes before the meet, the urgency gets lower, decreasing the chances of the prospect showing up. The sooner you book the call the better.

Bonus tip: Avoid Monday and Friday when scheduling a meeting as people are more focused on internal meetings and planning on those days.

Confirm, double-check, and follow-up

After you schedule the meeting, it’s important to follow up with them to make sure they don’t forget. Strike while the iron is hot as they say, and the same principle applies in this particular situation. Especially when you understand the fact that decision-makers have a lot on their plate which results in a busy schedule.

The chances are you aren’t the only one vying for their time, as competing sales reps will be also looking to book them. That means you have to act fast and follow up quickly in order to beat them to the punch and get them on a call. Ideally, you should confirm the call a day before, or on the day the meeting is scheduled to take place.

When doing a follow-up to confirm the meet, make an effort to show them that the upcoming call is not just you going through the motions with a new prospect. The confirmation email should be personalized of course, and let them know you appreciate them for taking time out of their busy schedule to hear what you have to say. You can even go the extra mile and follow up on LinkedIn or even give them a reminder call.

Bonus tip: If you’re sending out an email to confirm the meet or you want to follow up on LinkedIn, you can set up a simple follow-up sequence in the Sales.Rocks Drip Campaigns.

Keep them engaged in the meantime but don’t push it

If you simply can’t schedule a meeting in a short amount of time, don’t worry is not the end of the world. In that case, you just have to maintain a high level of engagement with them.

You can start with send them a recap email after the initial call to go over the key points and to book the next meeting. If the meeting is scheduled a couple of days out, or even later, send then at least one or two email follow-ups as well, and include a price of content that is relevant to them.

Bonus tip: Connect with them on LinkedIn, interact with their posts and engage them there to keep the conversation going.

Tips for booking sales meetings the right way

We covered the main reasons why a prospect can ghost a sales rep without warning, and how you can turn things in your favor and prevent that from happening. Now, here are some tips on how to properly book the meeting and not give them a reason to think twice about it.

Establish a relationship with your prospects

From the first email, you send to them, to the final touchpoint which hopefully will result in you closing the deal, commit to building and nurturing the relationship with your prospects. They’re not just going to hop on a call with you, just because you asked nicely. Give them a good reason why they should.

Like any other relationship, you’ll need to dedicate your time and effort. It involves, getting to know them and what they do, listening to what is important to them, understanding their challenges to meet their needs, and figuring things out together.

Don’t just focus on sending them emails, trying to book a call. Focus on how you can help them and not how can you sell them on your pitch. The more you get involved and show that you care, the more the prospect will trust you. After all, good relationships are built on trust.

Get on a discovery call before the big meeting

A discovery call with a prospect is the perfect opportunity to have a one-to-one conversation and ask them the right questions. The research beforehand can only tell you so much, now it’s time to get the details.

Inexperienced sales reps often make the rookie mistake of talking about what their product can do. Prospects, however, don’t care about how great your product is, or what it can do. They’re only interested in what it can do for them.

The purpose of the discovery call is to find out what the prospects’ goals are, what challenges they’re facing, and how can your product help them. Near the end of the call, go over what you’ve learned together, to see if there’s any additional info they could share.

In short, the discovery call allows sales reps to identify goals and pain points, in an effort to discover a way for your product to be of benefit to the prospect.

Send them useful content

The content you add to your follow-up emails should represent value to the prospect, based on the pain points you’ve discovered on the previous call. This way, you make the follow-up email about them, by addressing their pain points and not just about you.

For example, during the discovery call, you notice that the prospect struggles with their cold outreach, so you send them over a post with cold email templates. You can also send them, case studies and success stories from other customers that were facing similar challenges.

Be clear about the purpose of the meeting

When you’re arranging the upcoming meeting with your prospects, be open about your intention and say exactly what the purpose of the meet will be about. This signals to them that you’re there just to pitch them your offer and be done with it. Their time is valuable, and if they believe that you’re respecting their time, they will also respect yours.

This requires you to be upfront about them about the purpose of your outreach, trying to understand the challenges they’re facing by listening to what they have to say and offering them a solution.

Keep in mind, that this works both ways, you’re engaging with them not just to make sales, but to find a way where you both get what you want. They solve their challenges and you get to close the deal.

Let them choose the time for the meeting

When you’re scheduling the time of the meeting, it is best to give your prospects a couple of options, so they can pick a time slot that works for them. You might be available at 10 in the morning on Tuesday but your prospect might have other commitments already planned.

A booking app is a must-have of course, to keep meetings organized. Plus, it prevents you from getting double-booked and it makes booking a lot easier for prospects, instead of having to go through multiple back and forth emails, or messages on LinkedIn. Alternatively, you could share your calendar with them and book it that way.

Trying to push them in scheduling a meet in a time frame that they’re not comfortable with, will lead to them not paying attention, or worse just outright ghosting you.

You have to be a bit flexible and let them choose when they want to sit down and listen to what you have to say. If they want to schedule later in the week, even though is not ideal, you can still make it work by engaging them until then.

Conclusion

Booking a sales meeting is about more than finding the right time slot and pitching. The booking process begins a lot sooner before even asking the question. What you should do is understand why your prospects are not showing up and see what you can do to avoid it. Go over your booking process, follow the tips laid out above and make sure you’re doing things right.