Telemarketing is tough and having arranged sales meetings it’s disappointing to hear that the prospect has cancelled the sales meeting which you set up. So how can you make sure that your sales meetings actually take place?

Here are 4 tips when confirming your sales appointments:

1. When you book the sales meeting ensure that you have been clear about the time, date and confirmed the address for the sales meeting.
2. Immediately after putting down the phone send out an email and a hard copy letter confirming the time, date, location of the sales meeting and all your contact details. You could also send an outlook meeting request, getting the details directly into the prospects diary.
3. Don’t call the prospect to confirm the sales meeting is still ok.
4. Make sure the sales team have the correct details of the sales meeting and they turn up at the sales meeting on time.

The most difficult aspect of this process is to control others in the sales process. Often salesmen insist on calling the prospect to confirm the sales meeting is "still on" under the guise that they don’t want to waste all that time travelling unnecessarily. The effect of this, leads to significant number of sales meetings arranged being cancelled or postponed. It’s not surprising then that this reinforces the salesman’s desire to do the same for all sales meetings that have been arranged for them. They have no realisation it is their actions that have resulted in the cancellations.

Over time I have run different split tests to understand the reasons for high "blow out rates" and then run surveys back to the prospects to understand the real reason for them postponing or cancelling a sales meeting when they have been called just before.

The conclusions are surprising.

Based upon identical groups, 32% of prospects will cancel or postpone a sales meeting if they are called by the salesman in the days immediately before a sales meeting to confirm it is "still on". Alternatively only 2% will actually contact you to cancel or postpone if there has not been a "confirmation call".

When surveying those that have cancelled the meeting after receiving a call over 91% stated they cancelling the sales meeting to save / create some extra time in their diary and they were really busy that day / week. Further, of those 85% responded that if they had not been called, they would have attended the sales meeting on the original time and date arranged and they had an interest in learning more about the product being offered.

So next time you have arranged a sales meeting and hand it over think about what the sales team are going to do with the sales meeting. Give them confidence that you have confirmed the sales meeting and that you have done everything reasonable to make sure the prospect will be waiting for them, and give them some facts on what is likely to happen if they call in advance or if they don’t. When you describe our results your sales team will attend more sales meetings and make more sales and you have done nothing at all.