Grow Your Sales Without Growing Your Staff: Stop Setting Appointments

You at 10:18 am today: How's tomorrow at 9:30 am to schedule a 45 minute online demo?

Them at 12:20 pm today: No good. How about tomorrow at 1:15?

You, thinking to yourself at 12:48 pm today: (If he would've replied an hour earlier I could've made 1:15 tomorrow work, but now I have a client call then.)

You at 12:49 pm today: How's the day after tomorrow at 10 am?

Them at 3:50 pm today: Sorry for the delay. Had an emergency come up. Tomorrow at 10 am is not good and the day after tomorrow I'm traveling. How about two days from now at 8 am?

You at 6:45 pm today, replying on your smartphone from your daughter's soccer practice: We have a staff meeting at 8 am but that ends by 10 am. How about 10 am two days from now?

Them at 5:45 am tomorrow: That'll work. Can you send me a calendar invitation?

You at 8:15 am tomorrow: Sure thing.

You then proceed to schedule a call for 10 am two days from now based on the email...however, that email was yesterday, so you schedule the demo in two days instead of tomorrow.

Them at 8:48 am tomorrow: Hey, I thought we agreed to 10 am tomorrow but you sent this for two days from now. I can't meet two day from now at 10 am and now my assistant has scheduled a client call for me at 10 am tomorrow. How is next week?

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Avoid all of this running around and wasting time by using some sort of scheduling tool that is linked to your calendar and shows your reader the times you have available so you can both get on with your lives.

Before I got HubSpot in 2014 and switched to their native Meetings tool, I used TimeTrade. to avoid this bouncing around.

They offer a 15-day trial and then it's just $78 for an entire year! So for $6.50/mo you can avoid that entire process above forever! 

It synchronizes with Outlook, Google, and iCal calendars so no excuses there.

You can also create different calendars for different functions.

For example, I have a client consulting calendar that shows up to three 60 minute options Tuesday to Thursday, 9 am to 4 pm with a 15-minute gap between any two calls and none can be booked less than 24 hours in advance.

I have guest interviews for The Sales Podcast that are 45 minutes long and only set for Mondays.

I have a 15-minute calendar link for those "got a moment" appointments with staff, vendors, even clients that need to catch up but not drone on forever.

I also have a product demo calendar that shows 45 minute options Tuesday to Thursday.

Each calendar type has its own landing page with instructions and sends an email with the invitation that sync immediately to the contact's calendar automatically.

Now I set most of my own appointments by simply using a shortcode text expander that sends an introduction and link to my contact based on the type of appointment I think we need to have and my assistant can focus on more productive things that make me more money.

Don't like TimeTrade or not sure if it's the best for you? No problem. Do a simple search for "online appointment scheduling" and you'll find ads for

• MindBody
• SquareUp
• CoconutCalendar
• Jituzu

You'll find organic results for

• Appointy
• Setmore
• Capterra
• Simplybook
• Schedulicity

And at the bottom of the page you'll find "Searches related to online appointment scheduling"

As you can see, you have no excuse to not find a scheduling tool that fits your budget, your industry, and your technology.

However, before you go clicking around and signing up for demos and playing with these tools, make sure you have your Process Before Login documented, otherwise you'll just get lost in the minutiae and end up confused, unproductive, and billed for software you forgot you even tested.

Now go sell something.