Stop Optimizing for Show Rate. Start Optimizing for Readiness.

Seems like many companies are dealing with this issue and i'd like to offer my not-a-marketer-just-a-recruiter insights.

Buckle up. It's a long one.

I was talking to a biz owner recently who couldn't figure out why their show rate was sitting at 30%.

They had the automations, text reminders and a whole follow-up sequence.

And their buyers? Busy people. Service industry. On-call. Jobs come up. Life happens.

And when they told me this I wasn't suprised at all.

Not even in the slightest do I claim to be a master at anything marketing, but what I thought was odd is that the answer to their problem seemed to be IN the question itself.

Accross the board, buyers (humans) are busy. Period.

Their schedule isn't often theirs, it belongs to whatever emergency lands in their lap that day.

So knowing this to be true of most people, why is the default solution to figure out how to get THEM to rearrange their life so they can show up on YOUR calendar?

You might have 14 text reminders, 3 emails, an automation sequence, and a partridge in a pear tree, all designed to get a busy person to stop being busy at the exact time you need them to stop being busy?

You're attacking this problem the wrong way.

You think MORE is what you need.

More touches. More reminders. More follow-ups. More pressure to confirm.

It's not.

That just addes more mess to their already scattered brains.

What you need is a different TYPE of contact.

And more TIME.

You pull both of these levers together and this problem starts to dissolve on it's own.

To put it simply:

You have to meet your buyers where they're at.

Here's something the gooroos don't talk about enough:

I'm willing to bet a lot more buyers than you think already know they want what you have.

They're not delaying because they're not interested.

They're not ghosting because they don't care.

It's way more simple than that.

They just need TIME to orient around their OWN readiness.

That's a real thing.

People have to get THEMSELVES ready mentally, financially, logistically, and they are ready when THEY are ready.

Not when your CRM says they should be.

That's just normal human behavior.

Now, can you try to force readiness? Sure.

And sometimes it works. You'll catch the few who this approach happens to work on or because the stars aligned.

BUT, even without any help, people WILL come after what they want.

They WILL prioritize what's important to them.

They always do.

So your job isn't to drag them to the finish line.

Your job is to stay close enough that when they're ready to run... you're the first person they see. You're top of mind.

When you're optimizing for show rate, you're trying to get your buyer to meet YOUR metric.

You're trying to get them to show up when YOU want them to show up.

That's backwards.

You're forcing a timeline on someone who hasn't decided yet, and then wondering why they ghost or drag their feet.

One of the biggest shifts I ever made (and it took a massive burden off my plate), was to stop optimizing for who shows up to a call... and start optimizing for who's READY to show up.

Let me explain.

Back when I was selling a B2C course for someone else, I did everything I could to NOT get on the phone with people too early.

I didn't wanna waste my time on someone who just wanted to ask questions and kick tires.

Video and resources are much better suited for TOF education, not my time.

So I set up my cadence to get in contact with people and then follow up with them relentlessly.

But here's what my follow-ups WEREN'T:

"Are you ready to hop on a call?"

"Do you have any questions?"

"Just checking in, are you still interested?"

That's a complete waste of time.

And here's what you're actually saying to the buyer when you do that:

"I need you to decide. Now. On my timeline."

Even when it's subtle... people feel it.

And when people feel pushed, even gently, they are going to resist.

Yeah, you're always gonna have the batch that's like "I'm ready, let's go" no matter what.

And I think that's why people keep taking this approach, because it works just enough to justify it.

But the majority of buyers?

They wanna buy on THEIR terms.

And I'll beat this drum until I'm blue in the face:

People make empowered, frictionless buying decisions when they are fully educated on what they're getting into.

Full stop.

So instead of pushing for calls, here's what I did.

I took whatever the marketing department was putting out (content, updates, insights) and I fed that into my follow-up sequences.

I was sending automated follow-ups to 200-300 people every couple of days.

Short stuff. Sixty-second reads.

"Here's a quick snippet of what's going on in the market right now."

"We just posted this — check it out."

"Two-minute breakdown on [topic]. Just wanted to keep you in the loop."

That's it.

No pitch. No pressure. No "so are we doing this or what?"

And every few sends, I'd drop in:

"Hey, if you want off this list, just let me know. No hard feelings."

You know what that did?

It gave people permission to stay curious.

It gave them the FREEDOM to decide on their own timeline.

It gave them room to ask ME those more nuanced questions specific to them that TOF marketing doesn't answer fully, rather than me interrogating them.

And because I had actually bought the course (domain expert), I could answer questions with depth and real answers because I actually bought the course myself.

I was using it. I wasn't regurgitating theory.

I was a user of what I was selling.

That made a HUGE difference.

What I was telling them wasn't hypothetical. It was experiential.

Same way I operate now with recruiting. I do it myself. Every day.

And that experiential knowledge is extremely potent in a selling conversation.

People can feel the difference between someone who's read the manual and someone who's lived it.

Now here's where this connects to your closers.

When you have a fast scheduling process and you're cramming people onto the calendar to hit your show rate... you're not protecting your closer's time. You're sabotaging it.

Think about it.

Your closer gets on the phone with someone who's uneducated, unsure, and not serious.

Now they've got two options:

Acknowledge the person isn't ready, let them go, and then get blamed for "not trying hard enough."

OR,

Twist the knife. Make up for rushed marketing and try to take someone from zero to 100 in a 45-minute call.

Those are two BAD options.

And this is why so much of sales feels manic right now.

Closers aren't trying to be pushy or manipulative, but when you hand them two losing choices, they're gonna pick the one that might make them money.

That's not a closer problem. That's a system problem.

Defend your closer's calendar like it's life and death (because it kinda is - "lifeblood", remember?)

If the people showing up aren't educated, aren't bought in, and aren't serious... your closer is set up to fail before they even say howdy-do.

So here's the flip.

Stop trying to get people ON a call.

Start building a system where they're asking YOU for the call.

You want your buyer saying: "I need to talk to someone. I'm ready."

And you can't force that.

You can't automate that.

You can't shortcut it.

But you CAN create it.

How?

By being in their brain more than everything else is.

Show up consistently. Educate them. Give them quick wins. Share what's going on in your space. Answer the micro-problems they're dealing with right now.

Don't keep asking "are you ready?" over and over.

Instead, say: "We're here when you are."

When someone is fully educated and they want what you have... they will pursue you.

They will want to work with you.

They will show up to the call without needing 14 reminder texts.

And the questions they DO have? They'll be GREAT questions.

Because they've had the time to figure out what they actually want to know.

What's important to them. What answers they're looking for, and whether those answers are gonna lead them to buy or not.

Given enough time, their brain has caught up.

They already know what buckets they need filled. So when your sales person gives them the answers... they're dropping them right in and rolling.

It's really not that complicated.

People buy stuff they wanna buy.

They do it all the time. Every damn day.

So when it feels like pulling teeth... ask yourself:

Do they know enough about what I sell to even know if they want it?

Most of the time, the answer is no. And that's your gap.

Spend more time educating. Spend more time being top of mind.

Make your follow-up sequences less about "hey are you ready to give me $10,000" and more about "hey, here's something useful."

Let people come to you when they have enough understanding and familiarity with you to buy with confidence (and often without even being asked to do so).

That's what I did with that b2c course offer.

I let time do the work.

Now, that's easier to do when you're not strapped for cash and you don't need the sale yesterday.

I get that. Not everyone has that luxury.

But even if your timeline is tighter, the principle doesn't change.

You're still better off with fewer, educated, ready-to-buy prospects on the calendar than a packed schedule full of people who don't even know what they're signing up for.

And when someone IS ready?

When they've been educated, they trust you, they understand the value?

It's like taking candy from a baby.

In the best way possible.