Welcome to The Birdhouse newsletter. It is approximately a 4 minute read.
In today's newsletter, we're going over:
The exact formula to calculate what a dip in show-rate costs you in real dollars
Why a 20 point drop in show-rate can quietly erase 6 figures in a single month
Where the leak starts, and why it is not a scheduling problem
A 24 hour fix to stop the bleeding before next month
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Multiply your missed calls by your close rate and your deal size
(What) Take your number of no-showsd, multiply by your close rate, then multiply by your average deal size. That number is what your show-rate costs you
(Why) Founders track show-rate as a % on a dashboard, but percentages don't feel like money until you assing a dollar value
(How) Do these things:
Pull your booked calls from the last 30 days and count exactly how many no-showed
Multiply that number by your close rate, using your actual trailing 90 day average
Multiply the result by your average deal size to get your dollar leak for the month.
Send that single number, in dollars, to whoever owns your sales process
Here are some of the best links I have found since last time I emailed you:
🎥 From the channel
How to Build a Personal Brand on Twitter/X from 0 to 10,000 Followers (Full Course) (link).
📰 News
X and Cursor just released Grok Bot, they’re always-on AI employee (Viktor competitor) (link).
The seven calls nobody noticed
A prospect told our Director of Sales something simple last month. His team booked 47 sales calls that month but 26 of them either no-showed or cancelled with no new time on the calendar.
That’s a 44% effective show rate. These weren’t disqualification cancellations either, so the prospects who were otherwise qualified found a reason to cancel on their own.
This not only wastes a slot on a sales rep’s calendar, but also kills their morale.
The formula that turns intuition into dollars
Here's another way to run the napkin math on this. Take your CDPBC (Collected Dollars per Booked Call) and multiply by number of no shows. At a healthy $1,000 CDPBC, we lost $26k on from the 26 calls who didn’t make it onto a live sales call with our client’s team.
This has a multiplier effect as well. On top of that $26k, it wastes calendar availability - so new warm leads have to book further out and have a lower chance of closing and showing on future calls. And this cascades for weeks and weeks and murders your analytics.
Run this on your own numbers before you read further.
Where the leak actually starts
Most founders treat show-rate a pre-call process problem. I argue that there's more to it that can be handled in the marketing and booking process.
This is why it's so important to weave in all pillars of content, including social proof that positions you as an authority. it's also even more important to speed run to an authoritative follower count as soon as possible so you have a perceived celebrity effect on prospects.
The bottom line is your call needs to be more valuable than everything else the prospect has going on in their life.
So between content, the DM conversation, the triage call, and/or the nurture assets - we must take the customer on a journey before they sit down live with the sales rep.
Fix the input, not the output
Do the math on your own show-rate this week. As a practical implementation, implement one adjustment to both content and setting:
Draft a piece of social proof content this upcoming week for every call that no-showed, spread them out to be posting once per day until the problem is fixed.
Draft a nurture asset (educational PDF, video, etc.) that is sent to every single DM lead before they book a call. Ensure they consume it before pitching the calendar.
Track show rate religiously until solved.
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Hope this helps.
Cheers.
Marcos
