Katie McManus says service-based business owners should refuse to reschedule sales calls when clients no-show. No-shows signal low buying intent and waste your time chasing them. What you allow expands, so set the boundary and protect your energy.
Chapters
The number one rule that I want to give you permission to set up in your business is one that will protect you from having nightmare clients who have no respect for your time, who will be so much more work than the clients who actually show up, are invested, and will see greater results working with you. If someone no shows your sales call, they are not allowed to reschedule. This sounds really harsh coming from a coach who works specifically with ADHD business owners, because people with ADHD tend to have time blindness. But let me tell you, if my clients who have ADHD and severe ADHD at that, can manage to show up for an appointment that they booked on my calendar asking for my time for free to learn about my programs, if they can show up to a DAM appointment, why can't anyone else? Back when I worked in corporate and I worked in sales, no shows were a nightmare because someone would set an appointment with you because they were interested in what you were selling and they wouldn't show up to it. Why aren't you chasing them down? So you'd have to spend cumulatively hours of your work week or your work month chasing down this person who already disrespected your time trying to get them to book another time. Someone who's comfortable no showing you once will be very comfortable no showing you twice or three times. Every single salesperson knows that the people who no show you are highly unlikely to ever buy your stuff. If they didn't care enough to even show up to the appointment that they set on your calendar, they don't care enough to buy. Now, in the case where you do reschedule with them and they do sign up, these are also the clients who expect you to bend over backwards to make their lives easier. And that's not saying that we don't want to deliver an excellent service to our clients. But there's a fine line of delivering an excellent service and you having to twist yourself into a pretzel and sacrifice all of your free time to do shit that they can't figure out or won't figure out how to do themselves. I've done this in the past. I made the mistake early on, kind of offering to do copywriting for a client, writing posts for them for social media. They changed the post even though they weren't talented writers. That relationship did not last long because they weren't pulling their weight. The red flags were there early on. One of the biggest red flags is that they no show an appointment. So I give you permission here and now to have a no tolerance rule for no shows. And I bet you're thinking, maybe something happened for them, maybe life got in the way, they just forgot. Shouldn't I be compassionate? To which I say, sure, if you want to be compassionate, that's totally up to you. But I want you to remember, what we create space for in our lives, we attract more of. So if you're making space for people to set up appointments on your calendar, no show them. Reschedule. No show those. And you're creating the space and the time to devote your energy to chasing them down, asking, what happened? Do you want to reschedule? The universe is always paying attention. What you make time for. The universe is cool. You want more of that? Awesome. I will gladly send you more of that. When you set the expectation, no one is allowed to waste your time. The universe is paying attention. Okay, cool. You don't want people who waste your time. You got it. We're going to calibrate to that now. So you have to have confidence that what you have to offer is worthwhile. When people want what you're selling, you don't have to chase people down and beg them to buy it. You can do the work to put yourself out there to promote your good work, to talk about the impact you have with your clients. And your ideal clients will be attracted to that. And they will book on your calendar and they will actually show up to the sales call. So be kind. Set things up for success so they don't. No show you. If you've done everything you can to give them everything that is necessary for them to remember that they booked on your calendar and they're still not showing up, big red flag.
