Has this ever happened to you? You have a hot new prospect that you need to schedule an introductory call with, so you send an email:
- “Hi Polly Prospect, let’s schedule a call to discuss your interest in starting a Direct Sales Business, when is good for you?”
- Polly Prospect emails back “Hi Debbie Director, I’d love to schedule a call I’m available Tuesday at noon”
- You email back “Sorry Polly I have a meeting Tuesday at noon, how about earlier at 9am?”
- Polly emails back “I’m volunteering at my child’s classroom at 9am, how about Friday at 4pm?”
- Your response “I have an event at 4pm, how about Monday at 11am?”
That’s FIVE emails and you have not even scheduled a call yet! Now a few things could happen next, Polly may get tired of this back and forth and not respond right away, and you end up having to work even harder to re-engage her in the conversation. You may go back and forth with five more emails before you schedule a time that works, and all during this time what is happening…Your prospect is getting “cold” and she’s beginning to think that maybe this is too much “work”…
Stop the madness!
There is an easier way, and it’s a concept I introduced recently when I shared a blog post about how the online scheduling service Tungle was going away. As a result of that post many of you have asked me “what is an online scheduling service and how can I use it in my business?” well to put it simply you can use it to stop the above scenario from happening.
Let’s take another look at that conversation using an online scheduling service:
- “Hi Polly Prospect, let’s schedule a call to discuss your interest in starting a Direct Sales Business, here is a link to my schedule, please select a time that works best with your schedule for us to talk”
- Polly then goes to the link to your schedule, selects 3-5 times that are open on your schedule and available in her schedule
- You receive a notice that Polly has selected some times to meet, you review them and pick the one that best fits your schedule
- The meeting is scheduled, both you and Polly receive an email with the call details.
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hi there! I use google calendar and redirect it to http://bookwithheather.com
my only problem is that I don’t know how to tell people to fix their time zone so when some people book it looks my availability is at 1:00 am and such. on MY end it looks right…… so there’s still some back and forth.
Are you having time zone issues with either of these other options?
Heather recently posted..Rest In Peace, Zig Ziglar
Hi Heather,
That is one of the advantages of using a scheduler system, the time zone is included in the scheduling task. For example, if you go to my scheduler page to select a time to meet with me, there is an option to select your own time zone.
And since both these services (as well as many other, but you need to be sure to check) link directly to your Google Calendar you don’t have to worry about carrying over the info to your Google Calendar, it will add it for you, so you can continue to maintain your calendar on Google.
Hope that helps, let me know if you have any other questions.
Shine On!
Melissa