Want to get more sales? Book more meetings and you will succeed. In this blog post, I go through some tips to help you keep your calendar full.

It is very usual in the business-to-business field to have a sales concept that’s entirely leaning on face-to-face meetings. In this screnario, without having the f2f opportunity to offer your products/services it is almost impossible to make sales, and key to succeeding is simply getting to schedule as many meetings as possible with your potential clients. The more you have meetings the more you make sales, simple as that. This is pretty much what our sales process is like and after making a few notes about the area, I decided to share a few tips here!

Conventionally, all meetings have been booked only by phone. It is still one of the most important sales tools we have. Anyhow, there are way too many, way too potential prospects that we will never reach by phone. I’m sharing here some tips on how to boost your booking not only by phone but in other ways as well.

I do hope to hear your opinion on these tips in the comment section!

The Good Old Phone. Always handy, easy to use… But no respectful person can always answer your calls.

• Tip 1: Download a CRM-app on your phone and call through that, so you get data who you’ve been calling to. (E. G. Pipedrive)

• Tip 2: Always use handsfree. It is easier to take notes at the office or drive safely. Use the best device available so your customer can hear what you’re offering them.

• Tip 3: Take advantage of the time you spend driving. You may have to stop every once in a while to take notes but if you do drive 40-50 000 km annually you have more than 700 hours more to do booking.

• Tip 4: Make sure your operator has the right name and company information to your phone number. It’s more likely to get people answer the phone when it’s “John” calling instead of “salesrep4”.

Text messages. I only tend to receive important text messages, and that’s why I always read all of them. This gives me the reason to believe that this is the case with most people. If you can’t reach people by calling, text them. Tell them who you are and why you’re calling. (I shared this tip once around the office and the next day I had a colleague thanking me for getting three new sales meetings for next week. Pretty awesome, don’t you think?)

As the messages pop on peoples’ mobile devices during meetings as well, texting is one of the best ways to reach your prospects these days.

• Tip 5: Make your proposal so clear that it is possible to respond with only a simple text

• Tip 6: Keep it short. The good old 160 characters is a great guide line for the lenght of your sales text

Propose a phone or an online meeting. It is easier to say “yes” to a phone meeting. It takes less time and you can participate from anywhere. This way it is easier to find a common gap your calendars.

• Tip 7: Use a presentation to support your story. Most people can adopt only 10% of the information they hear. By sharing a visual material at the time of the phone meeting, you can help your customer retain your pitch even eight times better.
• Seidat is a great tool for sharing your presentation during a phone call
• Seidat works on any device
• No need for any app installations or sign ups for the viewer
• With Seidat you keep control of what happens in the viewers screen without having to use any screen share apps
• Works fine even with a poor internet connection
• Seidat is also handy when you’d like to show a video or two during your presentation

• See the screenshot of Seidat’s share panel below. When you choose to use Seidat to support your online or phone meeting, just go to your presentations share panel and click “Seidat Live”, then create a new live link and (copy) and share it to your audience by email or text message and the Live presentation can begin.

• Tip 8: I think phone meetings are a lot like “booking-call sequels”. You go a little bit further in the matter still having the main focus in getting a face-to-face meeting with the decision makers.

Email. Email is one of the hardest formats of contacting as it is the most used way of communicating with most businesses. If you do use email as a way of contacting and trying to book meetings through it you want to keep your message short, clear and as personalized as possible. Don’t put too much effort into the layout or bringing out your brand too strongly with logos and images as they start to seem too advertisement-like and go flying straight to the trash can.

• Tip 9: Focus on great headlines and make them personalized. Most corporate decision makers get more than 100 emails a day and most of them are read or put to trash based on the headline (subject line)

• Tip 10: Write an easy-to-do call-to-action and repeat it a couple of times in your email to make it more effective

LinkedIn. People’s behavior on LinkedIn has changed quite a lot the past 1-2 years. It is no longer only a place where you follow your own connections and do prospecting for new clients. LinkedIn has become a forum where you can share your business related issues, opinions or ask for recommendations for collaborators. It has become easier to participate in discussions outside your own circle. I have made connections with multiple great clients on LinkedIn using the following methods:

• I have just added people as connections
• Then opened a conversation by sending a message
• After a short convo, I've proposed a meeting
• If the product or service you’re selling is relevant to the persons’ needs you will probably get a meeting

• I have made connecting easier for myself by posting interesting questions that start a great conversation as my status updates in LinkedIn
• When you have new interesting people taking part in the discussion in the comments of your status update it’s nearly 100% certain they want to connect with you

Facebook. Facebook is full of professional business forums where people are asking for help with different issues. Be there and tell people about your solution.

Share your Calendar. This is one of the most important tips I have to give you. Sending emails back and forth about a suitable time for a meeting takes often too much time and sometimes makes the scheduling too hard to actually achieving your goal of getting a meeting. By sharing your calendar with your prospects and clients for example via youcanbook.me you can save a huge amount of valuable time and effort.

We have multiple solutions in making your sales process more efficient. Book a meeting with me and we'll see what we can do to help you to make more sales! You can find my contact information below to make a phone call, send a text, LinkedIn message or simply book a time on my shared calendar.

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