Have you ever had a strong, clear next step scheduled
with a prospect, everything seems good,
they seemed into it, they agreed to the calendar invite,
and then, suddenly, a couple days later
or a couple days before the actually meeting,
you get that dreaded email that says declined?
What do you do?
The prospect just canceled the meeting.
In this video, I'm going to show you
exactly what to do when a prospect cancels your meeting.
Check it out.
(light music)
Number One- How solid was the initial interaction
in the first place?
That's always the question that we have to ask ourselves.
One thing that I find is that there are ways
to try to recover or bounce back,
but ultimately, the solution is to avoid
ever having to recover in the first place.
So we have to think,
how solid was that initial interaction that I had
with that prospect?
And did they feel like what we were doing
was actually a priority and was worth their time?
By being a little bit more introspective
when a prospect cancels a meeting,
did you really do everything you could have?
Did you follow your process?
Because if you didn't, then chances are,
the declined meeting really is just another way of saying,
"You know what, I'm not seeing enough value
to waste my time here."
Number Two- Immediately pick up the phone.
Now, this is counterintuitive
to a lot of modern salespeople.
We see in our community
in the Sales Insights Lab Accelerator,
people are always saying, "Well, if someone declines
or cancels a meeting,
what should I send in the email?"
And I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa,
immediately pick up the phone."
Don't just send an email right away, get on the phone.
Try to get them on the phone.
Because you can always deal with things more effectively
on the phone.
Now, you may not get them on the phone, and that's fine,
but you should try a couple of times
to get them on the phone
because that's going to be your best bet
at actually salvaging this situation.
Number Three- Email to see if they actually meant to cancel.
I find that about one quarter of canceled appointments
actually weren't intended to be canceled.
They just pressed the wrong button.
Depending on the sophistication of your prospects,
people accidentally cancel appointments all the time.
So rather than just freaking out,
the first email back should basically be just asking them,
"George, I saw that you declined the appointment.
Did you actually mean to cancel?"
And what this is doing too is it's a little assumptive
and it's going to push them to either say,
"Oh no, I didn't," try to cancel it
or to try to reschedule.
Now, it's not a guaranteed move,
but by just basically being assumptive that,
geez, they probably didn't mean to cancel this,
that's going to help you get the situation back on track.
Number Four- Get them on the phone.
Now, we talked about this before,
but even after that email, we want to do everything we can
to avoid the back and forth by email
and just get them on the phone.
The phone is a salesperson's best friend
when trying to salvage any deal gone wrong
or any sales situation gone wrong.
So try to get them on the phone.
Chances are, if you've already had a meeting with them,
you should have their phone number
or you should have some way to be able to contact them
by phone that's not just email.
So do what you can to then even after that email
to immediately get them on the phone.
Be very willing to be the salesperson
who just immediately picks up the phone.
That's always a good place to be.
Number Five- Send three new options.
If the prospect canceled the appointment,
now the next goal is to reschedule that appointment.
Now, there are going to be situations
where they're just going to say,
"You know what, not a fan, this doesn't make sense anymore."
And again, that's where you really want to get them
on the phone.
But let's say for some reason they've agreed to,
they just couldn't work that time.
Now the next move is to send three new options.
So don't send them a Calendly link
or some scheduling link.
Instead, just offer them three new options.
So, Monday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern,
Thursday at X, so get those three options and say,
"Do any of those options work for you?"
When you do the little legwork to show your three options,
that's going to be more effective.
Now, of course, at the end you can say,
"Hey look, if none of these work,
here's a little Calendly link and you can schedule with me."
But again, the Calendly link is really giving up control
of the sales interaction.
I'd much rather try to,
with a prospect that you've already had communication with,
to try to get them to agree to an option
that you've provided.
Number Six- Keep reaching out to them
if you don't hear from them.
Our rule of thumb is that if a prospect ghosts on you,
you should keep reaching out to them
unless they tell you to go take a hike.
Now, if they say,
"Go away, I never want to hear from you again," fine, go
away. We don't have to be creepy about it.
But if, for some reason,
they just don't respond to us,
we should keep reaching out to them.
We should be sending them emails.
We should be calling them.
We should send them LinkedIn messages, whatever.
Be assumptive that they actually wanted
to have an engagement with you or an interaction.
Because if we just give up,
there's a good chance that they were just being lazy
or they didn't get around to it
or there's other things going on.
So by consistently reaching out to people,
until they tell you to go away,
you're much more likely to salvage that interaction.
Number Seven- Get better buy-in next time.
Now, the one thing that solves all problems
around ghosting is actually being better at sales
in the first place.
So we've always got to put pressure on ourselves to think,
"How can I just be better next time?
How can I get more buy-in from the prospect next time?"
Not this person, but the next person that comes along.
Once you've ultimately let a deal go astray,
it's a lot harder to try to get it back on track.
But by being stronger throughout the entire process,
you're going to get more buy-in
and they're less inclined to actually cancel that meeting
in the first place.
There is what to do when a prospect cancels your meeting.
And if you enjoyed this video,
then I have an amazing free training
on the step-by-step formula to closing more deals.
Just click right here to get registered instantly.
Seriously, just click right here.
This is an in-depth training that will help you
close more deals at higher prices,
all while generating more meetings.
Also, if you got some value, please like this video below
on YouTube and be sure to subscribe
by clicking my face, which should be right about here,
to get access to a new video just like this one each week.