Cancelled Meetings Cost You More Than Time

I’ve just tripped into my 27th year of working with the accounting profession. With the career that I’ve been blessed with, you’d think that people cancelling meetings that they themselves setup to discuss the possibility of working with me, would be a thing of the past.

Not so.

I had three days in London last week, built around a longstanding client engagement. Two meetings were scheduled prior to that session, and two meetings were scheduled to take place afterwards. Out of the total of 5 meetings booked, only 2 went ahead. Why? Well:

1x Forgot

1x Double booked

1x Transport issue

You can decide for yourselves how valid those reasons are, but it wasted a lot of my time and never stops being frustrating.

This caused me to reflect on whether I could’ve done anything more to solidify them. In one case, yes definitely, in the others, no, I followed proven confirmation methodology.

So, what’s my point? I have two of them for you today:

  1. If you feel yourself getting frustrated or angry by unprofessional meeting cancellations that waste your time, take comfort in knowing that it happens to all of us.
  2. Make sure you confirm your meeting within 24 hours of its scheduled start time. This doesn’t prevent cancellations; it simply gives you more time to schedule something in place of the cancellation.

Next time, anyone who schedules a meeting with me is going to have to pay a deposit. 😉

To your success,

Martin Bissett

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Martin Bissett

Martin Bissett is the founder of the Bissett Group of companies including data, software and digital communities such as APT, CAS, AIR and PAR.

Previously he established a high six figure consulting firm while serving as a keynote speaker with over 100 one off and repeat engagements to his name, as well as becoming the most published author on his topics of specialism with 14 books including 1 bestseller.

Since 1998, he has played a major part in working with over 2000 accounting firms in over 44 countries. These projects have led to those firms acquiring over £500m of recurring fees (before inflationary increases, referrals and upselling are factored in). He stopped keeping track of this number over 5 years ago.

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