There’s nothing more frustrating than to go through all the effort to reach a sales prospect on the phone to schedule a sales meeting, and then on the day of the event, the sales prospect pulls a ‘no-show’ and disappears without a trace. It happened to me again last week, and I swear it has happened to me for the last time.

It all seemed so well on the initial sales call we had. My sales prospect expressed his interest in my product over the phone, and thought it made sense for us to speak again. We agreed to schedule another follow up call on such and such a day, confirmed our calendars, and said our goodbyes. It wasn’t until my prospect was a ‘no-show’ for our scheduled call that I realized that I missed an important step in the process when we first spoke on the phone. I forgot to confirm the appointment in advance when we first spoke, and suggest an alternate date and time for our call in the event that my prospect was unable to make the original call we had just scheduled. My bad…

For now on, whenever I schedule a sales meeting with a prospect I am going to suggest an alternate date just in case. Better to get that out of the way up front than to be angry when the prospect disappears and pulls a ‘no-show’.

Here is how I’m going to handle things next time:

Me: "Can we set a time in the calendar sometime next week to see where we may have a fit”?

Prospect: “Sounds OK to me”.

Me: "Are you looking at your calendar”?

Prospect: “Yes I am”.

Me: “What day looks good for you”?

Prospect: “How about next Thursday @ 10:30 AM”?

Me: "I’m available then so I’ll mark my calendar to give you a call”.

Me: “Before I hang up, is there any chance we might schedule a ‘rain date’ in the event things don’t work out for next Thursday”?

Prospect: “It would have to be sometime the following week”. “How about the following Thursday”?

Me: "That works for me as well”. “I’ll speak with you again next Thursday @ 10:30 AM”. "I appreciate your time”.

Prospect: "OK". “Catch you later”. “Bye…”

Rule #1: You can't get angry at disappearing prospects if you don't do something about it up front to keep them from disappearing in the first place.