“Hi, this is Bob Jones. We have an appointment tomorrow at 10 a.m. I was just wondering if you’d like to cancel?”
No one would intentionally call a prospect and create such an opening, but if your reps aren’t careful when calling to confirm sales appointments, they might as well be, says Al Davidson, president of SSM (which stands for Strategic Sales & Marketing, Inc.), a provider of major account lead generation services (manageyourleads.com).
“If you have gotten far enough to schedule a face-to-face, then the prospect is interested enough to want to listen. However, once the day rolls around, there most likely will be something more urgent that has risen for the prospect. Calling to confirm can inadvertently give him or her the opportunity to back out of the appointment to put these new fires out.”
At the same time, you want to make sure the prospect is expecting you and the appointment hasn’t slipped his mind.
One easy way around this is to place your confirmation call after-hours the day before the meeting and leave your reminder on voice mail. He’ll get the message first thing in the morning and be expecting you. Could he still cancel? Sure. But if he hasn’t gotten proactive and called to cancel before the day of the meeting, then chances are good that he won’t do it the day of.
