What will I get from this article?
We’ll go through how to schedule discovery calls and product demos to raise conversion rates, increase revenue, and accelerate your deal pipeline. You’ll also save time and hassle with free sales email templates for confirmation, reminder, and follow-up messages.
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Even the most fantastic product can’t sell itself.
You need a sales team to find qualified leads, explain how your product can help, and nurture them so they become your customers.
Sales teams provide companies with people to create and care for. After all, with no users, there’s just no point in having a product.
With that being said, sales is a tough field to be in. So much depends on you and your selling ability that it can get pretty stressful, especially since you have a lot more responsibility than just talking to potential customers.
According to a HubSpot survey, sales representatives spend just one-third of their day actually talking to prospects. How do they spend the rest of their time?
- 21% writing emails
- 17% entering data
- 17% prospecting and researching leads
- 12% attending internal meetings
- 12% scheduling calls
- 11% training
- 11% reading industry news/reports
What if we told you you could get some of that time back?
By using a sales meeting scheduling tool, you can recover that 12% of your day spent on scheduling calls. In fact, it can even help you save a large chunk of that 17% of time spent entering data as well.
Read below to see how to keep your customers happy, simplify your sales flow, and find additional time to focus on your leads.
Using a free meeting scheduling tool for discovery calls
A discovery call is often your first opportunity to introduce a product to your lead.
It’s important that prospects can easily get in touch with you when their interest is highest.
79% of prospects want to connect with a sales rep either during the awareness stage when they’re first learning about the product, or during the consideration stage after they’ve spent some time researching.
Let’s go through how a scheduling tool can help you convert leads into customers during this initial period of interest.
1. Make sure your lead can easily book a time to speak with you
Friction-free bookings will ensure your potential customers are immediately left with a positive impression of your company.
Insert a link to your booking page at every point of contact with your lead.
If you are communicating via email, include it in your signature. If it’s in a chat on your page, go ahead and copy and paste the link into the chat.
If you are at a conference or trade fair, you can add your booking page QR code to your stand so that visitors can immediately sign up for a meeting.
You can also embed your booking page right on your website or include a “Book now” button so that potential leads can book a time to chat without having to reach out to anyone first. Once they click on your booking page, the lead will see all your free times and can book without any annoying, back and forth messages. Plus, time zones are automatically detected, so that’s one less worry to cross off your list.
Once they pick a time, it is automatically blocked off in your calendar and a calendar invite is sent to the lead.
What does that mean? It means you don’t have to waste any of your time scheduling calls.
2. Confirm your discovery meeting
Next step: confirm the time and date of your meeting.
This is a fantastic opportunity for you to make a lasting impression and give your prospect all the important information they need before you meet.
We recommend including the following in your confirmation email:
- A message saying how happy you are to meet with them
- A confirmation of the exact time & date of the meeting
- A link to the meeting
- Duration and talking points so the prospect knows what to expect
- A link to a product overview, brochure, or any other sales material to get the ball rolling
- Your name and contact information in case the prospect has any questions before the meeting
Below is an email template you can use. Everything inside of these brackets { } are shorthand codes that will automatically populate with the required information, saving you even more time.
“Subject: Your meeting with {BOOKING-PAGE-TITLE}
Hi {FNAME},
We’re delighted you are interested in learning more about [product]. Your meeting is booked for {START}.
Please choose one of the options below:
It will take place on Google Meet via this link: {GOOGLEMEET} OR
It will take place on Microsoft Teams via this link: {MSTEAMS} OR
It will take place on Zoom via this link: {ZOOM}
Passcode: {ZOOM-PASSWORD}
I’m looking forward to telling you a bit about our product, answering any questions, as well as getting to know your pain points and requirements.
Our meeting will last approximately {DURATION} and will focus on [talking points/agenda].
In the meantime, feel free to learn more about [product] by visiting: [link to product overview]
Best,
[your name]
[your position]
[your company]”
💡 Pro-tip: feel free to replace {BOOKING-PAGE-TITLE} with your name or with {TEAM-NAME}. For more advanced options, see our article about conditional statements.
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Did you know that starting in 2020, 81% of sales professionals began conducting more video conferencing as opposed to in-person meetings?
As you may have noticed from the email template above, YouCanBookMe integrates with popular video call platforms such as Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. This means unique meeting links will automatically be generated for you for each meeting.
All the time saved on manual tasks really adds up, doesn’t it?
3. Send a reminder of your meeting
We’re all human. That means sometimes we just forget.
That’s why your next step is to send your lead a reminder email, which will significantly reduce no-shows.
The content of the reminder email is pretty simple. Include:
- The time and date of the meeting
- What product you will be speaking about
- A link to your meeting
- Your contact info in case of additional questions
We recommend sending the reminder one hour before your meeting.
4. Don’t be afraid to follow-up
Follow-ups can make all the difference. 60% of customers say no four times before saying yes but 48% of sales reps don’t send any follow-ups.
Talk about a wasted opportunity.
A follow-up email can really be a chance for you to reconnect with your lead and move them to the next step in your sales funnel.
Start your follow-up by thanking your prospect for their time. Next, you want to reiterate why your product can help solve their company’s pain points and offer them a demo. The key is to be bold but not too pushy.
We recommend including a link to a booking page for product demos right in that follow-up email, so your lead can book when you are top of mind.
With YouCanBookMe, you can create up to 200 different booking pages at no extra cost.
Create one for discovery calls, one for product demos, and as many separate pages as you need if you are working for various brands or products. You can customize branding, logos, and notifications for each one as needed.
End by putting your contact details and reminding your lead that they can always reach out to you if they need any assistance.
If this seems like a lot of work, don’t worry - it’s not.
With a sales scheduling tool, you can automate confirmations, reminders, and follow-ups so you never miss an opportunity to connect.
Do you know that you can also automate SMS reminders?
For Pearl Lemon Leads, a B2B lead generation agency, these are key to reviving cold leads. They send SMS reminders 30 and sometimes even 90 days after an appointment to get their cold leads back on track.
5. Make rescheduling fast and simple
This is yet another trick that is crucial to successfully move your lead into the next step of your sales cycle.
Let’s imagine you have a great lead, but unfortunately, the time you both agreed to meet doesn’t end up working for them.
They reach out about rescheduling, but between calculating time zones, free slots, and waiting for the other person to reply, they already had a discovery meeting with a different company and are really interested.
Ouch. Tough luck.
Now, let’s reimagine that scenario. Your great lead needs to reschedule.
They open the confirmation email you sent them and see two handy links in the email, one to cancel and one to reschedule the meeting.
They click the link to reschedule and pick a new time. They automatically receive a calendar invite and a new confirmation email for the booking. All done.
Seriously, that’s it.
You get to keep your potential lead without having to lift a finger, and they picked a new time without any awkward explanations or long back and forth conversation trying to find a new time to meet.
Check and mate.
Using a free meeting scheduling tool for product demos
Ok, so your discovery meeting is over, and it’s time for the next step in your sales funnel: the demo.
Product demos are your chance to combine your deep product knowledge with everything you learned about your prospects’ needs.
The result? Showing your lead exactly how your product will help them.
The first step to a successful demo is scheduling it. Again, you need to make sure you put a link to your booking page at all contact points where leads are interested in demos.
Remember those customizable booking forms we mentioned earlier? They come in clutch here. The key is to include a few questions about the company and their problems right in the booking form so you can tailor their demo and boost your conversion rates.
The rest of the process will be similar to the one for discovery meetings. First, you need to send a confirmation email.
Here’s a handy email template you can use:
“Subject: Your [product] demo
Hi {FNAME},
We’re excited to show you our product in action. Your demo is booked for {START}.
Please choose one of the options below:
It will take place at [address]. OR
It will take place on Google Meet via this link: {GOOGLEMEET} OR
It will take place on Microsoft Teams via this link: {MSTEAMS} OR
It will take place on Zoom via this link: {ZOOM}
Passcode: {ZOOM-PASSWORD}
I’m looking forward to explaining how your company can use [product] to [insert benefits here].
The demo will last approximately {DURATION} and will focus on [talking points/agenda].
In the meantime, feel free to learn more about [product] by visiting: [link to product overview]
Best,
[your name]
[your position]
[your company]”
Next up, send a reminder email and then follow up. In your follow-up email, make sure to include a link to your booking page in case your lead would like to meet again to go over anything.
Do you know other teams that could use some scheduling help? Check out The Booking Handbook: How a Scheduling Tool Can Help Your Team for advice on how recruitment, HR, customer success, UX, and university teams can use online scheduling software to their advantage.
Your potential customers are waiting
From increasing revenue and building long-term relationships to boosting brand awareness and business growth, we have a lot to thank you for, sales teams.
That’s why we think it’s imperative that you have the time to do what you do best: finding qualified leads and turning them into loyal customers. By using a sales scheduling tool, you will have the time to do just that.
Automate scheduling all while making life easier for your prospect and see the difference it makes to your sales statistics, productivity, and peace of mind.