How Scheduling Automation Can Boost Your Sales

Manual and administrative tasks are usually the enemy of every sales process. The more time your sales agents spend on them, the fewer opportunities they have to pursue new deals. That’s precisely why process automation is on the rise these days – and scheduling automation is no different.

The ability to schedule meetings, consultations and product demos is important for many sales reps out there. Yet, scheduling them manually can take a lot of time and effort, and often involve planners and journals. There are ways to make it easier, though - both for your sales agents, as well as your customers. Here’s how to automate the appointment scheduling process for your business.

Why should you automate appointment scheduling in the first place?

Most sales teams strive to be productive and efficient. That’s great news – but the issue is often that the tools they have at their disposal (if any), are not exactly helpful.

In many cases, sales reps still waste their time on completing manual tasks and constantly switching between their inboxes, CRM records, phone systems, and other software. In such circumstances, scheduling their appointments often proves to be difficult. Why exactly?

1. Sending personalised appointment requests is time-consuming. Sales agents tend to send a lot of emails on a daily basis, and many of those emails include appointment requests. In order to streamline this process, many sales teams take advantage of templates. Now, copy-pasting surely saves some time, but it rarely offers the desired level of personalisation that customers might expect. This, in turn, affects the overall customer engagement and satisfaction.  
2. Agreeing on the time that suits both parties can be problematic. Speaking of sending emails - sales reps may actually waste a lot of time exchanging messages before they agree on a suitable time with a prospect. As a matter of fact, it can take several follow-ups and changes in one’s calendar before the meeting actually takes place.
3. Once you agree on a specific time, you’re likely to send a calendar invite anyway. There it is - yet another email the sales rep has to send. In order to “secure” the time slot, sales agents often go into their calendar, create an invitation, fill it in, and send it to the prospect. All of this takes time, and often the necessity to switch between the system as well.  

How to tackle appointment scheduling, then?

Start by adding an appointment scheduling tool to your sales stack. Basically, its purpose is to simplify and unify the scheduling process for all your sales reps in real-time, which is what you should be aiming for.  

Harmonizely, for example, will allow your customers to see the sales rep’s availability via a dedicated link, or embedded form on a website. The only thing left to do for them is to choose among the available options. And just like that - the time slot is secured, and visible in the sales agent’s calendar thanks to software integration.

In order for your sales team to benefit from scheduling automation, though, it’s important to have everyone on board, and actually willing to use it. If they can’t (or worse: don’t want to) take advantage of the appointment scheduling software, then there’s no way it will boost your sales in the long run.

How exactly can you boost your sales process with appointment scheduling?

Automating the appointment scheduling process is basically a win-win situation: you’re making it easier for your prospects to get in touch with the sales reps, while taking the manual work off of your sales team. Therefore, the chances of turning your website visitors into qualified leads (and then paying customers) are higher, not to mention that your sales cycle is likely to get shorter at the same time. Here are the main benefits stemming from appointment scheduling automation:

• Less time wasted on repetitive tasks. You’re eliminating the necessity to email back-and-forth in order to find a suitable time with your prospects. What's more, the scheduled meetings automatically show up in the sales rep’s calendar, so there’s no need to switch between the systems. All of this frees up a lot of time.
• The ability to track appointments better. Keeping an eye on the appointments scheduled with all your sales reps have never been easier. This, in turn, gives you more insights on your team’s productivity and effectiveness.
• Increased chances of conversion. Basically, if you have the form embedded on your website, you make it effortless for the website visitors to leave their contact details and learn more about your products or services.
• Improved customer satisfaction. When using a dedicated form, it’s really intuitive for the customers to schedule meetings with your sales team, which also saves their time and effort in the end.

All in all: you’re simply using the available time and resources better, and also increase the chances of higher conversion rates and profits at the same time.

How can you make the most of an appointment scheduling tool?

Once you create a scheduling form for all your agents, it’s time to make the most of it. You can not only share it with those prospects who already expressed the interest in an appointment but also:

• Add a scheduling form underneath a “Contact”, “Request a quote” or “Schedule a demo” button on your website - you will encourage your website visitors to actually make an appointment and convert much faster,
• Use scheduling links in your emails - if you’re sending out email campaigns anyway, you might want to include there scheduling links as well. This way, you can prompt people to schedule a call directly, instead of going through multiple steps first.

Automate appointment scheduling now

If your sales agents are wasting too much time on scheduling their meetings, it’s high time to automate the whole process for them. This will not only increase the productivity of your sales team, but also help you improve conversion rates and customer satisfaction in the long run.

Encourage your website visitors and prospects to take action with Harmonizely. It will let your customers easily schedule meetings with your sales reps, regardless of calendar type their use. And the best part? Everything is the matter of a few clicks and sharing a dedicated link, without the necessity to exchange any emails back and forth. There are many calendar integrations available, not to mention that the timezone is automatically detected so the date and times are always expected the same.

Schedule a demo to see it for yourself.