“Has anyone struggled with a low no-show rate on sales demos? If so, what technique(s) have you done that really moved the needle. We’re doing all the obvious stuff (two automated reminder emails, live calling to confirm, etc..) but are thinking about gift cards for demo completions and things like that. All ideas are welcome!!”

This is a question I received from a Village Global founder this past week.

And it’s a good one.

There could be several reasons you might be struggling with no-show rates. And if I were working this question live with a client — it came to me via email through an intermediary — I’d inquire to drill down as to what’s happening. In the absence of such an exchange, let’s look at the items most likely contributing to this no-show issue.

First, some foundation: industry standards for show rates are at 90% if you’re doing a good job. Anything below that number is a sign you should be patching up the leakage in your sales funnel. Let’s dig in.

If qualification/intro calls and demos are two separate meetings – which I most often recommend – I might ask how we gave our product overview in that first call. Did we do enough to enhance our prospect’s interest by the end of this call? Did our competitive advantage land with our audience? Did we mention our strong list of customer logos as social proof? Could we have shown a tiny bit of our product? A quick peek. I’m talking about a user flow or two. Just enough to whet our prospect’s appetite without it being a full-fledged demo? These are all questions I’d explore to ensure that my product has been properly represented and that its value has been conveyed to the prospect. If your product is compelling enough to the prospect, it will generally create enough pull for folks to attend demos.

The next piece I’d examine is whether or not we conducted sturdy qualification for timing/urgency in our introductory call. If we didn’t qualify well, and the prospect sensed they might not need our product immediately from the overview we gave them, and had competing priorities, it might be enough reasons to flake on a demo meeting. Instead of qualifying them out in the intro meeting, you end up scheduling a demo that they might not have been ready to see.

Knowing that, you might ask, “Paul, that’s all well and good, but how do you go about qualifying for timing or urgency?”

Sales Rep: When would you like to see the business impact of our solution?

You might get a prospect that doesn’t give you much.

Prospect: Not sure, actually.

Sales Rep: Okay…Is this a yesterday thing? A tomorrow thing, a next week, next month, next quarter, or next year thing?

Here, I’m trying to get the prospect to slot themselves into a timeframe by giving them pre-made blocks of time. A “yesterday” answer may garner an internal fist pump for our sales rep – a sign of a hair-on-fire problem – but one needs to be ready for any answer.

Prospect: Now that you’ve got me thinking about it…it’s a next month thing.

Now you’ve got something to work with. The beauty of initially framing the question as the prospect needing to see the business impact of our solution? It equates to being fully onboarded and deriving value from the product/service. Meaning: if the prospect tells you they need to start seeing impact on July 1st, and you’ve got a two-week onboarding period, you can push for contract signature by June 15th. You’re using your prospect’s words as traction to get a deal done by a particular date. Just gorgeous, in my book.

Here’s one more thing I’d scrutinize to increase show rates. Are we selling next steps? And if so, are we doing it well? You might think, ‘What does this next steps business even mean?’

And I get where you’re coming from. It’s considered Sales 101 to book the next call on the current sales call. But without there being any value inherent in the next call, there’s a great likelihood your prospect decides this next meeting is not worth their time.

Selling next steps is the idea that a successful sales process is not only about selling your product. It’s also about selling the next step in the sales process as something important for your prospect to do/attend. It needs to be compelling in and of itself, and must contain agenda items and payoffs that are valuable to your audience. Only then will you get folks to attend your meetings, and your no-show rates to drop. Another way to think about selling next steps is that it is the connective tissue between the steps in your sales process. Without it, you’ve got no bridge between those steps, and you increase your chances of having deals drop off or stall on you. I’ve written extensively about selling next steps and have included a framework on how to do it here. It’s one of the sales fundamentals that founders and startup operators miss the most.

Those are just the first few elements I’d look at when presented with our question above. They’re not exhaustive, but places I’d want to examine before anything else. One of the values of coaching is our ability to problem-solve these things live, and therefore more quickly. We can inquire more deeply, pinpoint the issue at hand as a brain trust between coach and client, and then come up with creative solutions. Consider this your invitation to send in more questions you’d like to see me answer in these posts. I’m always looking to help folks solve their startup sales issues.