Meeting-show rate
Outbound & Outreach- Definition
- Meeting-show rate measures the percentage of scheduled meetings where the prospect attends (vs. no-show, last-minute cancel, or ghosting). It is the second conversion efficiency metric after reply rate — a team can have high reply rates and low show rates if the prospect loses interest between booking and the meeting. Industry benchmarks: cold-sourced meetings show at 50–65%; warm-sourced meetings (conference, referral, intent-based) show at 70–85%. The delta comes from context — a prospect who understands why they are meeting you is less likely to drop off.
Why it matters
A booked meeting that no one attends is worse than no meeting — it wasted the SDR's time, the AE's time, and left a calendar hole. Show rate reveals the true cost of your sourcing strategy. A high-reply-rate/low-show-rate segment may be worse than a moderate-reply-rate/high-show-rate segment when cost per attended meeting is the real metric.
Example
A GTM team tracks meeting-show rate by source: cold outbound: 55% show rate; conference attendee: 82% show rate; referral: 90% show rate. The difference of 27 points between cold and conference-sourced means the cold team must book twice as many meetings to deliver the same qualified conversations. The team restructures capacity toward conference and referral sourcing.
How Impossible Data helps
Prospects sourced from Impossible Data's attendee lists show at higher rates because they have real context — they attended the event and understand why they are relevant.