Do we still care about sales appointments?

[carculus]

Appointment confirmed and appointment shown are the indicators of a well run showroom. Solid process is reflected in those two data points.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Alex, I still think appointments matter. The problem is we made the appointment count the goal instead of the next step.


If the customer agreed to a real time, the vehicle is there and ready, and somebody owns the visit, that’s an appointment.


If they said, “I might stop by Saturday,” and we put it in the CRM so the board looks better, that’s not an appointment.


I’d still track set, show and sold. I’d just rather have 10 real appointments than 25 pencil-whipped ones.


Mr. Appointment can stay. He just has to stop counting maybes.

Let's see if I can remember where my head was at 8 years ago when I made that post... I can only guess I was seeing a lot of appointment gamification that was leading to poor show rates.

I am not against setting appointments in any way, shape, or form. I'm against pay plans that are too focused on setting appointments and not focused enough on selling appointments.