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When it comes to your business, communication tools can help you develop relationships and increase trust with your leads and clients. They leave less room for error, create streamlined workflows and make your audience feel cared for. They also create the opportunity for you to drive leads and clients towards a specific ‘next step’ action in every communication or marketing campaign.
When you are not driving the next step in your funnel you are losing valuable attention you are getting from your audience. The best way to drive these next steps is to make it as easy as possible for your audience. No friction, no hoops to jump through, a simple ask by the company, and a seamless experience for the client.
Booking Lead and Client Meetings
For companies that include live calls for discovery, consultation, sales, ongoing work, or support, much time can be wasted when steps to book these calls include back-and-forth emails between multiple team members. Instead, make that next step in your funnel effortless with direct booking links.
There’s much to gain when you utilize a direct link to schedule a call, meeting, etc. that is already connected to your calendar and day-to-day workflow. It’s a great way to:
- Drive Action
- Coordinate Efficiently
- Save Back and Forth Time
- Set up Automated Reminders
- Streamline the Communication Process
- Increase Calendar Accessibility
- Give the Client More Flexibility
- Set Clear Expectations
By adding a meeting or video conference tool to your stack, you’re making the client experience even smoother. Integrating the conference tool with your direct calendar link will open up even more benefits. You’ll be able to create automated reminders, re-scheduling links, CRM updates and internal alerts, and much much more.
For those looking for a custom set-up of their scheduling and meeting system, reach out to us at Automated Dreams for help getting this outlined and implemented.
We’ve worked with many types of calendaring, scheduling, and conference systems. Based on our experience we recommend HubSpot’s “Meetings” scheduling system which offers seamless integration with the Google Calendar platform, along with video conference tools.
Other useful scheduling platforms that we use with our clients and highly recommend include Acuity, ScheduleOnce, and 10to8.
Through the integration of these tools, you can seamlessly integrate a direct schedule link in your communication that will connect with all your back-end workflows. You can then use this new automation in any of your communication paths, from the website ‘contact us forms, emails, proposals, landing pages, web page CTAs, and anywhere else you can insert a hyperlink.
10to8 vs Acuity
With 10to8 you can sync your calendar two ways and create your calendar link. That means once a client books a call with you it will immediately show on your google calendar. Sales reps that work from their google calendar love this feature and it allows them to streamline their day-to-day.
Similar to 10to8, SquareSpace’s scheduling platform, Acuity, offers similar features but also allows the ability to add “pay-per-session” for coaching sessions, consultations, or any other paid scheduling. Acuity is a great tool to use for group sessions, as it allows you to set limits on the amounts of people who can book at certain times so there’s never any confusion with clients.
Integrating Video Conference Platforms
Business meeting tools such as Zoom are often used to meet new clients and stakeholders or create marketing webinars. This tool takes communication to the next level with recording, screen sharing, virtual backgrounds, chat tools, and more. Much more than standard phone calls, these tools also provide detailed scheduling capabilities, list building, and integration with your calendar and other office software suite tools.
For our own workflow as a firm, we utilize Hubspot Meetings with Zoom for our lead and client meetings. We’ve integrated our separate calendars to different zoom meeting rooms so that our leads looking to chat with our sales team get direct access to schedule on their calendar while our clients receive a separate direct link and automation routed to their specific team’s project calendar.
This type of scheduling and video conference system has saved us time and money and allowed our team to grow without a hiccup. We’ve seen countless clients come to us with hours spent on manual systems that don’t have the personalized feel that only video can produce. While lots of forward-thinking businesses already benefit from automated lead generation and email nurture campaigns, automated and integrated scheduling and video conferencing platforms provide an advanced level of automation that will free up even more time to be spent on growing the business.
Adding Them Together: Scheduling System Benefits for Your Business
Whether you’re meeting through a Zoom video conference or in your office, the seamless experience your leads feel when using easy scheduling links and receiving timed communication reminders should not be underestimated. In many cases this is the first experience they have with your brand, so make a good impression.
Yes, while you can always schedule appointments manually, and this can produce more trust with one-on-one back-and-forth messaging, this way of working is prone to human error, time-consuming, and incredibly inefficient.
- Avoid human error – When you manually schedule a meeting, you run the chance of making a mistake with the date and time, or worse, forgetting to put the meeting in your calendar at all (we’ve been there). If your business is large or you deal with numerous clients or projects simultaneously, the chance of these errors rises exponentially.
- Save time and resources – Doing everything yourself might feel like the responsible thing to do, but it is also extremely inefficient. While making an appointment or adding an entry to your calendar is quick, you also need to factor in the time it takes to respond to emails, respond to phone calls, and confirm details. Automated online scheduling platforms are accurate, fast, and independent of human resources.
- Streamline operations – Automation is the way of the future because it creates repeatable processes and allows you to focus on more important tasks. Whether you use Zoom or Google Hangouts as your online meeting platforms, the ability to gather contact information and set up meetings automatically allows you to reach out and engage with your customer base without disrupting your other activities.
Have an advanced routing case for your sales team, group coaches, teachers, or need a custom-built system?
Automated Dreams is here to help you create automated marketing and sales processes that will increase your company’s productivity, while also saving time and money. With expertise in scheduling automation and integrations, we can help implement or create your custom scheduling system. Reach out to us for a free consultation and learn more about our strategy and implementation packages and retainers.
