Have you ever played email ping-pong with someone trying to figure out a good time to meet with them? You go back and forth looking for a day when you are both free and then try to find a time that works best for you. It can take 8-12 emails to do that. It doesn’t need to be that hard. You don’t need to play email ping pong. In fact, there doesn’t even need to be one email sent.
All you need is an online scheduling program. Here’s how it works:
1. Choose a scheduling program. Most have a free or low-cost option.
2. Connect it to your Outlook, iCal, or Google calendar so that people don’t book time with you when you are already busy
3. Set up your booking preferences:
a. How long do you want meetings to be?
b. How much notice do you need? Is there a cost to meeting with you?
c. Should a text or email reminder be sent to you and the other person?
d. What questions do you want to ask when someone makes a booking (so that you are prepared for the meeting)?
4. Once your calendar is set up you will receive a link that you can now put on your website and also share by email. Only the available spaces in your calendar will be open for people to book.
Having an online scheduling program is a fantastic way to cut out the email noise. It allows people to find your website at 1am in the morning and book a meeting with you for a few days later, right then and there. While the scheduling program will take care of everything for you (automation at it’s finest), you have one very important task. You must make sure that you block that in your own calendar if you don’t want people to book time with you on a specific day or time. Say for example that you want to have lunch with a friend, the minute you make those plans, jump into your calendar and block that time by creating an event “Lunch with Sandra”. That will stop anyone from booking time with you.
Here are the two of the most important types of time you should habitually block in your calendar: 1. Personal time: some for you, some for your loved ones - no work is done here. 2. Work on your business: time for marketing, business building, and education. 3. Work in your business: plan travel, help clients, work with suppliers. When you use a scheduling program you will always have total control over your calendar.
