POLL: Do You Confirm All Of Your Meetings? Because I Don’t
A while back, my colleague Adam wrote a blog saying that sales folk should confirm all of your meetings, which he firmly believes and is why we built that feature into Spiro’s sales automation CRM. His points were basically:
- It can make you look more professional and considerate;
- Confirming meetings gives you a ‘sales moment’ that you can engage in with your prospect; and
- Doing so can possibly save you the three hour drive from Chicago to Indianapolis just to have your prospect say “oh were we meeting today?”
While I think he has some good points, I don’t think the advice of confirming your upcoming sales appointments is applicable across the board.
In Sales, Timing Is Everything
Timing is obviously a huge factor. I can see meeting confirmations being handy if you set anything over a few weeks in advance. But if it’s Monday and you set a meeting for Friday, why should you confirm something that you just agreed to? Do most of the meetings you set skew closer to the latter category?
Probably my biggest argument against always sending meeting confirmations is the ever annoying, last second opt out. Have you ever worked really hard to get a meeting on someone else’s calendar – only to have them cancel on you when you try to confirm? “Oh, Justin — that time no longer works for me,” is an all too common occurrence – and by trying to confirm the meeting, you’ve actually just given someone the easiest possible out to cancel on you. I say, if they are going to cancel on you – make them earn it!
What Do You Think?
Now I know that this sentiment is not shared amongst everyone out there (not even everyone in our own company), so I bet Adam a bottle of nice Scotch that more people take my view than his.
Let us know in the poll below, and feel free to let me know what type of Scotch I should be hitting Adam up for in the comments:
Photo courtesy of flickr user thinkpanama
