While a no-show here or there won't make or break your sales success, over time, missed meetings and lapsed demos are a real quota-killer.

Not only that, missed meetings are a real drag on your personal time and morale.

This article gives you a step-by-step walk-through that is proven to increase your demo attendance by adding a personal touch to the scheduling process.

The Sales Demo “No-Show” Funnel 

Straight from the Bonjoro Playbook, the no-show funnel aims to eliminate ghosting by allowing you to send personal reminder videos to your leads and prospects in the days or hours before their demo.

The idea is to create a psychological connection by putting a face to the meeting or demo—you’re more than a calendar alert and an email, you’re a real person. 

The prospect gets to know your face, voice and receives a reminder not only that they booked a call, but that they’ll be meeting with a real person who took time out of their day to meet with them. In other words, they may feel more obligated to show up—or at the very least, they’ll keep you in the loop if plans change.

Here’s how to set up the funnel in a few easy steps:

1. Identify your goal

OK, when creating a funnel, the first thing you want to do is identify your GOAL. Only then can you track if it's working or not.

This one is easy.

Your goal = reduce demo no-shows. So you'll want to track your no-show % and work on reducing it.

The best thing to do is split test this approach vs. your current method. This could be:

A = send them a personalised video before the demo

vs.

B = rely on your standard automated emails firing from either your calendar app or CRM.

2. Create your Trigger

For this funnel, we're sending personal videos before the demo, so we'll focus on how this is done using Bonjoro, a tool for sending personalised videos at key moments in your customer funnels.

If you don't have a Bonjoro account, you can get a FREE 14 day trial to create and test this funnel. If it works you'll be adding thousands of dollars to your bottom line each month.

Inside your Bonjoro dashboard, your first move is to set up the right trigger for this campaign goal (reducing no-shows), by heading to the Workflows tab.

From here you can create a Workflow that pulls your customer contact into Bonjoro, to record them a personal video X days, or X hours before the meeting based off a tag or event in your CRM.

You’ll need to decide which action should automatically create a task. For example, you might opt to create a Bonjoro task that reminds you to follow up X number of days or hours before the meeting is scheduled.

Or, you might set a reminder to create a personalized video a couple of days after the initial confirmation.

If you're familiar with Zapier, Bonjoro's Workflows work in much the same way. Bonjoro even links with any app on Zapier (like Calendly, Bookafy, Book Like a Boss), so you can easily create this funnel no matter what CRM or calendar tool you use to capture your sales demos.

3. Create your video template:

For the purposes of the demo no-show funnel, you'll want to create a re-usable video template that can be used whenever you record your prospect a pre-demo video.

Your template can be customised with an email subject line and email copy to prompt your lead to watch your video, and you can add your own branding and a call-to-action button on your video landing page.

This means you can easily send a personal video whenever a new demo gets booked. Just record your video, select your saved template and then just hit send.

You can edit your video-email template

...and your video landing page:

3b. Template ideas:

Here's some ideas for creating your own template.

• Subject Lines

Like emails, videos need to be introduced with the right subject line. Take a look at the examples we’ve outlined below--the first two offer a short explainer as to come, while the third option is a bit cheekier--though still centered on reminding the prospect that there’s an upcoming call.

Source: Bonjoro's Video Funnel Playbook

• Email Body

While you’ll want the video to do most of the talking, the email body should back up the headline and provide a bit more context for what the prospect should expect from the video.

Here are a couple of options sourced from our Playbook:

Source: Bonjoro's Video Funnel Playbook

The first example is designed to lay out the agenda for the call. The benefit here is, expectations are made clear before the prospect watches the video. From there, when they hit play, they’ll receive additional details.

• Call-to-Action

What is the next step you want the customer to take?

Make sure that you always include a call-to-action in every written, verbal, or pre-recorded message. We recommend including a CTA link in the email body, a button, and a verbal call-out in the actual recording. While that might seem like overkill, these various “CTA points” serve as a way to reinforce your message and make it easy for customers to act at any moment.

4. Send your video

That's it, once your funnel and your template is ready, all you need to do is wait to be notified via your Bonjoro app, and record an engaging video for your prospect at the perfect moment.

You can record your video either via Bonjoro's native web recorder, Chrome plugin, or handy iOS and Android apps if you prefer to record your videos on the move. Here's what your video will look like to your prospect.

Top Tip - custom attributes. If you capture extra data about your customer in your CRM or calendar app, you can even pull that into your Bonjoro account, so it's visible at the time of recording your video. This means you can easily tailor your message to each prospect. You can read more about custom attributes here.

That's it. You're ready to go!

Remember this funnel is all about results, so make sure to A/B test against your current method, and should see a HUGE uptick in sales demos attended!

BONUS: What to say in your video

Here's some extra tips on what you could say in your video to reduce drop-outs and create a first-class prospect experience.

1. Reinforce the Value of Your Demo

People often agree to a meeting before gaining a solid understanding of its purpose. 

They might do this because they feel pressured at the moment or because they didn't really get a chance to think through why it might be valuable to take the call. People show up to meetings when they know what to expect, and that it's something that they're curious about discussing. 

Unfortunately, 58% of sales meetings aren’t valuable to the buyer.

Source

If you haven't successfully communicated the value of attending the meeting from the beginning, the prospect will likely start to think about other things that may be more important in the context of their own life or work. 

Avoid this problem by making sure you book all meetings with a purpose—this means no update or check-in calls that don’t have a goal attached. The more value, and the more compelling the subject of the meeting – the more of a priority it will be for them to show up.

2. Share the Agenda

Before the meeting, be sure to send an email outlining what you'll be discussing during the call. 

Your agenda should include the following:

• Prospect challenges and pain points

• What you plan on discussing

• Next steps

• Setup and onboarding info

You'll also want to make sure that you mention that you'll be saving time for the prospect's questions, making clear that their goals, challenges, and objections are important to you. 

Taking the time to clarify how you plan on approaching the meeting is a great way to show prospective buyers that you care, that you're listening, and that you value their time. 

Additionally, outlining your demo agenda gives prospects the chance to weigh in with feedback before the call, which could lead to a more productive meeting and more personalized solutions.

3. Make it Easy to Reschedule

Another way to reduce your chances of being ghosted by a prospect is understanding that not every no-show is a deliberate snub or a sign that they're not interested. Things come up--be it work obligations, illnesses, or something else--and as such, it's worth offering the option to reschedule in your follow up emails and/or videos. 

Include a link to your scheduling tool, so that the other person doesn't have to call you up to reschedule or remember to send out an email.

While this may seem like a simple thing, giving your prospect the ability to reschedule in a matter of clicks puts some control back into their hands.

4. Place Limits on How Far in Advance Prospects Can Schedule Meetings

While we just discussed the importance of making things convenient for your prospects, that doesn't extend to offering unlimited time for scheduling meetings. 

If too much time passes, prospects are likely to go cold--as they may forget about the engagement altogether, or simply forget why they were interested in chatting with you in the first place.  On your end, you'll face more challenges closing, as that initial urgency has long passed. 

Pro Tips:

In the end, reducing the number of no-shows comes down to a few key points:

• Laying out expectations and next steps.

• Demonstrating the value of attending this meeting.

• Adding a personal touch to communications.

• Sending reminders with key details. 

The points outlined above can go a long way in between good and great long-term sales performance. If you don't address the no-issue, chances are, you'll waste more time and energy chasing prospects and closing deals than your counterparts with more control over their calendar.