5 ways to effectively schedule a meeting with a client

Some of my peers and colleagues have trouble to book a meeting with clients. It sounds easy, but if it is your first rodeo it can be a bit troublesome to just get started. Here are some of the tips I shared with my colleagues in the last couple of months.

1. Use the phone, darnit!

Talking directly to the other person is the easiest way to find a time that works for both of you. If you use e-mail or text messages you will always have a delay. If you are like me and book several meetings you will run into situations where the customer takes days to respond, and you may already have booked meetings in the suggested times.

Grab the phone and give the customer a call. I know some of you don’t like to use the phone, but it makes everything so much easier. Try it!

2. Suggest a couple of times

If you have to use e-mail, give the client two options to choose from.

I’m available monday morning and wednesday after lunch. Which suits you best?

Let’s say you are trying to book a sales meeting, this technique works much better than asking ‘When are you available?’.

The benefits of inviting the other person to the events is to clear out any mistakes directly. You both share the same info, and it should be clear when and where you are going to meet.

Some things I usually enter in the calendar event:

Location
Time and date (duh!)
A short description/agenda
If it is the first contact, I’ll include both of our phone numbers in the description if someone needs to cancel.

4. Use software to schedule the meeting

When scheduling one-to-one meetings I’ve found that the new software called Meet works well. I actually wrote this kind of software about 10 years ago, but it never got any traction - and it is only available in Swedish (link) - so it is in the deadpool. :)

5. Use lunch meetings for busy clients

Meeting someone for lunch is a nice way of getting time from an otherwise busy client. Everyone has to eat. When you buy them lunch they are also automatically a bit thankful. Humans always try to reprociate a favor, so this works surprisingly well, even on clients who knows about this trick.

Here in Sweden, we have something called “Fika”, where you have coffee together. This is also an easy way to get a meeting with a client. Invitations with the headline “Fika?” works well here. Just make sure to bring some cinnamon rolls to the meeting.

Bonus tip:

When you set up a calendar event with Bob from Acme Inc, don’t write ‘Meeting with Bob from Acme’ as the headline of the event. Bob will see the same in his own calendar, and won’t be very impressed with a meeting with himself. Instead, write what the meeting is about, i.e. “Website meeting” or “Discuss new broschure for summer launch”.