Why People Don't Show Up to Sales Calls (And How to Fix It)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the YouTube channel. Today I'm going to be talking about how you can decrease the number of no shows. So if you're a business that books, calls or appointments things that we need people to then show up to, I'm going to show you how we can drastically decrease the number of people that don't turn up so that more do turn up so that we have a much better, better business and a better life. You see what is going to happen in your business if you implement the things I'm going to share today, we will increase the show up rate. The percentage of people that book calls that show up will go up. Okay, massively. As a result, we will present more offers to people and you will make more sales. So what we are talking about right now is revenue generating activities. This is a gateway to more sales. It will decrease the wasted time when you're sat there waiting for someone to turn up or your team are. But ultimately it's going to help us build stronger relationships with these prospects before they even turn up to the call as well, which carries on through to the entire relationship. So this is seriously powerful stuff. So strap in. Okay. Buckle up, get your attention, goggles on. Who the hell am I and why can't I talk to you about this? Well, my name is Elliot. I'm the chief marketing officer here at Entrepreneur Circle. I've been in the advertising space for a very long time, built my own agency, sold it, and now here I am. And at Entrepreneur Circle we do lots of stuff, but importantly, we spend a decent amount of money on marketing. Here's a snapshot from our tracking software. 1.15 million we spent last year across our portfolio of businesses, many of which rely on us booking calls. So in particular we have a software company, Genie AI where people book demos and we also have high ticket coaching program where people book application calls to see if they fit. So we book lots of calls, in fact 6866 calls in 2025. And so getting people to show up to these calls is a big fucking deal for us. And we learned this the hard way because truthfully, we always focused on how many calls we could get booked into the calendar. But here is some real life stats from our software company. And this was earlier. In 2025 we would have calendars filled with appointments, but 21% of people would show up. 38, 21, 10. I was kicking myself. We were spending all this money on ads, filling our sales team calendars and literally 1 in 10, well, 2 out of 10 were showing up. It was very annoying. A because it meant we were wasting a bunch of money on these appointments and they weren't turning up. B it was really tough for morale. Nothing is worse as a salesperson having a full day of calls and then one of them turning up and you kind of sat there twiddling your thumb. And all in all, it's just very inefficient and drove our customer acquisition cost up a lot. So we needed to go deep on this, we needed to fix this for ourself. And so we did. We spent a lot of time thinking about it, plotting, planning, and as a result we created, developed, learned about this system and we implemented it and boom, the results speak for themselves. We very quickly went from 10% to 44 to 71 and then we basically cruise and mildly fluctuate between 60 and 74%. And so for anyone wondering what a half decent benchmark is for show up rate, the answer is 60% is really good. 70% is amazing at any type of meaningful scale. It's going to be very difficult to get above 70% for some of the reasons we're going to explore. So I'm going to share this exact system with you today so you can swipe it, deploy it for yourself. But first, before I do so, dear listener, we must understand the reasons why people don't show up in the first place. Because if we can understand what's going on, then that helps us not only identify things that we can make better, but it means we can do them in the right way, execute it in the right way. That's going to ensure these reasons that are preventing people don't stop us. So the first reason people don't show up to calls is frankly, they don't know they have the call. As crazy as that seems, a lot of people will book a call and the call does not. Actually for a few days, sometimes even a couple of weeks, while life is busy, a lot goes on and they just forget the thing doesn't make it into their calendar, and then they get to the day and they're just doing something else. They have totally forgot the appointment even exists. And therefore in that moment, even though they booked it, they do not know they have the call. That is reason number one. The second reason is that they can't join the call. They remember they have it, but they physically can't find the link. They don't know how to join the Zoom call because for some reason it got lost in their emails, maybe went to their spam folder and they have a little bit of a look but then fuck it, I can't find it. So I'm not going to join. So mechanically, an inability to join the call you is next on the list. Very simple stuff. But believe me, 8020 of why people don't fucking show up right now. Number three, they're confused. They're confused about exactly what the call is about or what they are going to get from the call. So they booked this thing because they had a bit of spur of curiosity, but as time has gone by they can see it in the calendar. Why did I book that? What actually am I going to get from this? Okay, you know what, never mind, I'm going to leave it this time. And then they just don't fucking show up. Number four, they're overwhelmed or intimidated. Believe it or not, they are either overwhelmed at the thought of the call or they are just too intimidated to actually join. They're a bit scared and as a result, the sense of pressure of coming onto this call and chatting to this person, I would just rather not do it. And it's a fear based reason which does happen. But finally, their perceived value of the call is too low. They are not clear and they do not believe the call is going to be worth their time because they remembered when it is. They've got the link, they know what the outcome is going to be and they're just very intimidated. But the perceived value is too low. So with that in mind, the tactics we are about to share are going to tick off all of these. Because if we tick off all of these, then our probability of somebody showing up goes through the flipping roof. So let's get into the good stuff. Step number one, starting with the basics. The confirmation email. The confirmation email is the thing that we share the second the call or the appointment is booked. And this email needs to do a fantastic job of ticking as many of those boxes as possible. We address exactly when the appointment is. We give them very clear joining instructions step by step on what's going to take place. We're going to be on zoom, it's going to be with this person. Here is the exact link. We confirm the contact information of them, but also of who they're going to be speaking with. You're going to be speaking with James. This is his email, this is his phone number, this is his job title. We give them some preparation guidelines. We say, look, we're going to be preparing all this stuff for the call. You're definitely going to want to come prepared, have XYZ and then again, any contact details, if you need to contact us, if you have questions between the call, if you want to reschedule, whatever it might be, you can do that. Okay? But we really want to make sure the details, the time, date, duration are massive and impossible to miss, how to join people and so on and so forth, simple stuff. But you have to execute this properly. And then the little pro tip is what we do with the subject line. You see the subject line, we want to always have confirmation in the square brackets because fun fact, the emails that typically get the highest open rates are the ones that have confirmation in. Because we are all trained from all of our online shopping habits to check the orders that we have received because we've just spent money on it. So therefore we put confirmation in and boom, you should get an 80 plus percent open rate on this email. And we lay out very clearly and we give ourselves the good starting foundations. So very simple stuff, but we have to do the simple stuff, right? Sometimes getting amazing results is not by doing advanced strategies, but by simply doing the basic stuff very, very well. And so to build on that, you must also not be lazy. Don't be lazy. I know you're not lazy, but please don't be. Because what most people do is they send emails from their shitty little system without all the email deliverability best practices. Because today getting through into someone's inbox is really hard. There have been a lot of changes as a result of the big uplift in AI generated cold emails and therefore inboxes. The email service providers are very hot on filtering out all the spam because the volume that's trying to get to you every single day is at all time highs. Therefore we have to make sure we are not going to get caught up into that or that we are going to minimize the chances of us getting caught up in that. So email deliverability, it's a bit of a dark art and there's no absolute perfect thing, but there absolutely are best practices. Configuring your dkim, maintaining a clean sender reputation, using the SPF and DMARC protocols, all this kind of stuff, whole separate rabbit hole. But make sure you do that first because again, if you're not doing this, all of the email strategies you're trying to do in the world are just handicapped, they're crippled because you're just going to be getting absolutely spammed. So that is the boring, unsexy work, but it has a big impact. Right, let's get a bit more advanced kind of the confirmation WhatsApp and SMS. So we do not just send the email and cross our fingers and hope and pray that that is enough. No, we send them a WhatsApp and a SMS message. This goes out automatically at the same time and it does the same things. Appointment details, who the call is with, any preparation you need to do for the call, and any questions, here's how you can contact us, simple and clear. The reason we do WhatsApp and SMS is because we want to increase the probability that the person actually reads it and consumes it. So we have this raised. We want to meet the prospect where they are at, we want to make sure we're communicating with them in the places where they are at right now. And so you can actually go a step further and actually send them an Instagram DM or a Facebook message or a LinkedIn DM as well. I learned this when I was signing up for a High Ticket Mastermind a while ago and the minute I booked the call, the head of sales who I was speaking to, I got the email, I got the SMS, he sent me an Instagram DM, a Facebook message and a LinkedIn DM or all at the same time. And I thought, wow, that's very cool. And you bet I showed up for the call. Okay, he got to me. In all the places that I actively spend time, not everyone spends too much time in their inbox. So this drastically increases probability of them showing up. Okay, then we get into some meaty stuff. The value dense emails. Because yes, we've sent them the confirmation across email, WhatsApp, SMS. Now we want to build and develop a better relationship. You see, the second someone books a call, there is normally a time period between the call taking place. Now naturally the shorter this period, the higher the show up rate. Because if I book a coolness tomorrow, it's fresher in my memory. I'm way more likely to turn up. If I book coolness in two weeks time, a lot can happen in that two weeks and therefore my probability of showing up goes down quite significantly. And so whatever this time is, normally in most businesses it's going to be two to three days and we have our calendars open for our sales team, normally four to five working days, the maximum they can book out. But during this period we need to build a relationship with them and we don't have much time. So we're going to send quite a few emails. But not just boring reminder emails. No, we're going to send value dense emails. So throughout this period we want to send them at least one Sometimes two and sometimes three emails a day, depending on the business. And those emails are designed to deliver a huge amount of value. You see every single touch point that somebody has with you, the moment they book that call is setting an impression in their mind and they are building these associations around what they are seeing and you. And so if we send them boring stuff, their impression of you is going to be boring and therefore their probability of turning up to the call decreases massively because you are boring. But if you're sending stuff that is valuable, that is value dense, every time they read it they go, wow, that was really interesting. Wow, I learned a lot more stuff there. These positive associations attract or attach onto you and all of a sudden the probability of them showing up starts to go through the roof. So we want to really make the most of that period and not squander it by sending out boring reminders. So how do we send a valuedance email? What the heck does that even mean? Very good question. So value dense email is designed to deliver value as it specifically relates to what you're going to be talking about on the call. And so the, the way in which we do this is as follows. We have a seven step structure. Starts off with the subject line and during this period I like to use questions because people are booking the call with us because we have a solution to a problem that they have. And so we're going to chat about that solution on the call. But in the meantime they're going to have a lot of questions and so I want to try and get ahead of the game and answer them. So my subject line is normally one specific question. So if it's our high ticket coaching program, it might be how long does it take to complete the program? Or it could be, are the coaches even any good? Where did you find these coaches? And then the email is going to directly address it. Every good email starts with a powerful hook and we must hook them by the collar and give them the question that restates. This is what we're going to cover. And then my preference is always to tell a story. We answer the question by first sharing a relatable story that illustrates the problem's impact, that shows that we understand them and then leads us to the solution that is our thing, is the solution here. And that ties up the story. We then always feed in proof because these people are normally cold, they're skeptical. And so we need to substantiate whatever we're saying and give evidence that, you know, this story happened. And then we have the call to Action, which in this case is reminding them of the call. And so we will input again the details of their call that it's on this day, here's how to join, and so on and so forth. I always have a PS. This is email marketing 101 because everybody reads the PS, so make sure you add one in. Again, this can either be with really valuable stuff or it can be with the call to action, you pick. But that is a value dense email. Now again, if you know your prospect, what you do is you take your icp, you take this framework, you put it into an AI like Manus, and boom, it starts to create these beautiful narrative driven story based emails for you. So that is already moving the needle quite a lot. Number four, pretty radical. But we do this, we call them up, we confirm the appointment by ringing the person up and say, hey, thank you so much for booking your appointment. I can see you're in the diary with James at 12pm tomorrow. That is fantastic. He's an awesome guy. You're gonna love him, honestly. He's gonna give you some really fantastic stuff. Is there anything you want me to tell him before the call? Have you got the link? Da da da da. And we're just having a polite conversation. We are humanizing the experience. We are showing them that we're not robots. We're not some random fully automated marketing funnel some teenagers built in their bedroom. No, we are humans. And we're ringing up to say hey and checking they're okay and checking they've got the details and checking that we haven't fallen victim to one of the first two or even three reasons why people don't show up to the call. Because they don't know they don't have the link or they're confused about what's going to happen. So calling them works tremendously. This leads us to number five, the personalized video message. So this is again a manual piece of follow up that our sales team do. The people that have the calls booked in and we supply them with a phone, they all have their own little iPhone and they have an iPhone because it enables us to send iMessages and WhatsApps. And these are very powerful things. And so what we do is we task every sales rep to send a personalized video either via iMessage or via WhatsApp. And the personalised video is between 30 and 60 seconds long. And this does a lot, none more so than it introduces the person they're going to be speaking with. And it shows that this is a real person. It Shows the face to the name and it begins to remove any hesitation people have about what the call is going to be. Who am I going to be speaking with? It tackles reason number four and the potential overwhelm or intimidation they feel about the call. Because we're just saying, hey, we're nice and friendly, I can't wait to talk to you. Here I am. This is me. I'm a real person. Happy days. Not only that, but as you see, based on the structure, because there's a specific way you do this in a way that works well. We're going to tap into the law of reciprocity, which is another powerful behavioral driver, because if people see that we are making effort for them, they are likely to return that effort. And for us that means turning up to the call. And so the very act of someone filming a video that says, hey, Jeremy, that is personalised to that person, that in and itself is effort that we have given. But then throughout, as I display my little script to you, we tell them that we are preparing, that we are working hard, ready for the call. And as a result, if people think we're preparing, which we are, then they're going to be way more likely to turn up because of the law of reciprocity. Very powerful driver. So how do we do this properly? Because you can totally do this and absolutely mess up your show brain. Because if you or your team start doing this and they're miserable and they're low energy, or their background is terrible and looks like a crack house, then guess what, it's going to have the opposite effect. People are going to be put off and they're not going to want to speak to you. But if you are friendly, well presented, enthusiastic, and you have a nice background that shows you're kind of credible and not living under a hole or something, then it's going to go really well. But here is the eight point structure that we follow to deliver these perfectly. So we have a personalized greeting, of course. We say their name and reference who we are. We confirm the appointment that we have booked in and we state the time and the date. We do a little personal introduction as to who you are. You express massive enthusiasm and it has to be genuine enthusiasm. You have to feel it, okay? It can't feel fake. Then we have practical confirmation. So we want to make sure they've got it in their calendar because otherwise we can just resend it to them. We can offer them support that is providing an easy way to contact us if they need. We mentioned that we're preparing and then we just say goodbye. It's very, very simple. So the entire thing might work like this. Hey Jeremy, it's Elliot here from entrepreneur circle. I see you booked an appointment with myself on Wednesday at 2pm I cannot wait to chat to you, my friend. I just wanted to make sure you've got the link. If not, I'll send it below and make sure it's in your calendar. I'm really buzzing. I've looked at your business, I can see you're a electrical company and goodness me, I've got three things already that I know I can share with you that are probably gonna really help. If you have any questions in the meantime, you can let me know if there's anything you want me to know or come prepared with the head of the call, then yeah, give me a shout. Otherwise I've been preparing some strategies. They're gonna blow you away. I can't wait to see you, my man. See you later. Boom. Only a few seconds ticks all those boxes and by golly, does that increase the show up rate Ginormously. A lot of people when you do that, they can't believe that you have sent them a video and it just gets the relationship off onto such a good level. Okay, number six, the final one, the thank you page videos. You see, when someone books the call, they're going to go to a thank you page, a confirmation page. Now most people, it says thank you will see you on the date of your appointment and that's it done. We are not going to do that, we are going to do something different. You see, when a prospect books the call, their interest is at an all time high. Their interest in buying your thing has never been higher than the moment they booked that call. And so what we don't want to do is show them a blank thank you page and say see you later. No, we want to enable them to continue consuming and learning about our thing because their interest is at an all time high. So whereas most people they opt in interest is high and then they don't do anything. So the interest drops over time until the point of the call and as a result we have a low show rate. What we want to do is make sure that whilst it is high, we are feeding them with additional content because the more they consume, several things are going to happen. Firstly, we have the law of familiarity or familiarity bias. And this is the more time someone sees you or the more time they spend with you, the more familiar they feel with you and the more familiar they feel with you, the more they like you and trust you. And so by enabling them to consume more, they're going to like us more, trust us more, and as a result, way more likely to show up. And when they do show up, they show up in a better frame because they know us more, they're more educated, they know more about the product and they have a mildly more affinity to us as well, which is a magical, magical thing. And so not only that, but you will find by doing this strategy, which is effectively putting a bunch of videos on the thank you page. So for those that want to carry on consuming, they can. The prospects that do make it onto the call are way more educated, they know the product, so they have more intelligent questions, they have less objections because they have done more research before, because we have made it easy for them. So what we normally do is have one big central video that says, boom. Thank you so much for booking your appointment. Here's what's going to happen next. Check your email, check your WhatsApp, check your SMS. We've sent you a confirmation reminder, you get that in your calendar. But in the meantime, between now and when we speak, you're going to want to do your due diligence on us. You're going to want to understand who we really are and what type of results we really can deliver. And so let me make it easy for you. On this page, I've created a series of videos that are going to answer all of the most common questions people have. And it's going to enable you to do your due diligence much, much quicker. So check them out below and I'll see you then. And then beneath, we normally have four, five, six videos that answer all the most common questions that we know come up. And so you will have a pretty good idea as to what those common questions are. Why should I trust you? Who the hell are you? What proof and evidence do you have that your thing works? Is this going to work for me the type of classic objections or. One of my favorite things to do is we go mining. So we go mining and in our sales team's calls, and we look at the calls and we feed them into manners and we get it to analyze them and we get it to identify the most common objections that are repeatedly occurring as a result. Then we can take those and we can create these videos. And they're very simple videos. They're just me at a desk. There's no crazy editing and graphics, just me explaining. Because in this moment, when someone has booked the call, they want to learn more, at least a percentage of them do. And as a result, we give them the right stuff, they learn it, come up to the calls more prepared and in higher frequencies. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you increase the show rate. The end. Because I am such a good sport, I want to enable you to execute these strategies properly. And. And so in the description below, I have a free playbook normally reserved for members of my secret vault. But you can get access to the free playbook. It's totally free and it walks you through this system in much more detail. So you can get the exact steps and scripts of how we do all of those things so you can implement it and start getting more people showing up. So that's all from me. Bye bye now.