Mr Business Golf

In most cases I am preaching to the chore when it comes to talking about the way many people waste other times by not keeping appointments, but there must be a few of you who are still making the wrong decisions when it comes deciding who gets your time or NOT.   So here is another look at what making that wrong decision does to you.

OH, They will Get Over It!

Everyone has days when nothing goes right.   However, just because things get out of hand causing overlapping appointment schedules there are very few acceptable excuses for not attempting to rearranging the scheduled or even canceling appointments in advance.   Not showing up for scheduled calls or meetings you scheduled does not sit well with whoever you made the appointment. 

The quickest way to commit professional suicide is to keep making appointments with people and not show up.  A true professional understands the importance of TIME.  The adage that Time Is Money is true for everyone in business or it should.  Time is universal and nobodies time is more than important than someone else’s. If it is, then you probably don’t need to make or accept appointments for calls or meetings. 

I recently asked to meet someone at the golf course for a round of golf and when the person showed up I was told that my guest had another appointment scheduled at the same time he did with me and wrote off the other appointment with saying… Oh they will get over it.

Taking the attitude..’Oh they will get over it’, will also not get you very far in the business world.  Naturally this remark was the focal point of conversation during the round of business golf.

I’m Always 10 Minutes Late!

Showing up late can be just as destructive to a business person’s reputation.  Depending on how late the business person arrives to the meeting will determine the level of severity.

Gone are the days of being ‘fashionably late’. Even the elite celebrity ‘A Listers’ are starting to see their popularity go down when they show up to a party over 5 minutes late.  Concert producers are pulling the plug on events that are late to go on stage as scheduled.  So, plugging the social aspects of being casually late to appointments into the way business is run has now become professionally unacceptable.

PING!…I’m Five Minutes Away!

How many times has the cellphone pinged with a text message from the person you are waiting for saying..I’m five minutes away..?  Generally that means it will be no less than 20 minutes before they get there.

The world of technology works well in changing schedules but only to a point.  Covering up for being extremely late to an appointment by baiting a person into thinking you will be right there..and then not…is pretty deceptive.

I Gotta Book My Self Solid To Make A Living!

For sometime now I have been running into business people who are faithfully following the mantra of Book Yourself Solid.  Generally these individuals are in the many business industries that require making large number of contacts each day.  I am sure these over achieving business people have taking this notion of making connections every minute of the day to an extreme or too literal.  The fact is these kind of attitudes and methods of doing business is very anti-productive. 

The possibility of someone not making an appointment is getting so normal that these people who have to make so many contacts a day to keep their jobs will overlap appointments so they have a backup to a possible ‘No Show’ during the .  It is getting to a point that when a business person gets contacted by one of these Book the Day Solid people, they will conveniently claim to have another appointment in hopes they don’t have to meet with them since they know they run about an 80% chance that the appointment will not be kept.

This problem with people not making appointments is growing and it is going to eventually make it harder for business people who do manage their time to make connections to others in the business world.  As log as people accept these disrespectful methods of developing business the problem will continue.  From what I have found most of the people who fail to make their appointments do not realize what they have done.  So I would suggest that maybe it is time they find out.

Bottomline:

When making or accepting an appointment to meet someone make sure no to accept other appointments or scheduled another meeting near the time of the appointment.  Being late or not showing is not only rude but makes the person being stood up have to rearrange their schedule or be  late to their next appointment.

If you have to wait more than five minutes for an appointment to arrive get up and leave.  Do not let others make you get off scheduled.  At the end of the day the person keeping the most appointments will be the winner of the most business..and rightfully so.

When things start going wrong during the business day’s scheduled and it comes time to deciding what appointment to make and NOT, have a plan on telling the person who was chosen as ‘NOT’ that you are unable to make the appointment.  It will help in the long run with your reputation as a professional.

Don’t make or accept an appointment unless you fully intend to make the appointment.