Scheduling meetings and appointments with prospects and clients is one of the biggest administrative burdens for sales teams. The endless back-and-forth emails, mismatched calendars, and constant rescheduling eats up salespeople’s precious time. However, intelligent automated scheduling systems are set to transform this process using artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms to coordinate timings and book meetings based on attendees’ availability. This technology eliminates the headaches of manual coordination to help sales teams maximize productivity.
The Problems With Manual Scheduling
Manually scheduling meetings via endless emails to find time slots that fit everyone’s busy calendar is hugely inefficient. Sales reps get trapped playing calendar tennis with prospects, trying to pin down a suitable meeting time amongst all the replies. This convoluted process has many downsides that hurt sales productivity and strain client relationships:
Firstly, manual scheduling is a major time sink. Studies show sales reps spend nearly 20% of their time just coordinating meetings – hours they could more valuably spend researching prospects, making calls, developing pitches, and closing deals.
Secondly, it’s very easy to overlook conflicting appointments across multiple calendars when scheduling manually, resulting in embarrassing double bookings. This leads to poor client experiences and more wasted time rescheduling.
Thirdly, without instantly visible availability data, salespeople struggle to find times when all key attendees can join. This results in disjointed meetings missing crucial decision-makers.
Fourthly, trying to coordinate meetings across multiple time zones manually is a logistical nightmare bound to cause mistakes.
Fifthly, the endless emails back-and-forth needed to find openings and confirm details heighten stress and chances of miscommunication between sales reps and clients.
And finally, rigidly pre-set meetings don’t account for unexpected changes in schedules on the day itself.
This broken process of manual scheduling hurts sales productivity, strains relationships with clients, and tarnishes brands. It’s clear sales teams need automated scheduling to optimize this critical activity.
How Automated Scheduling Improves Sales Meetings
Automated scheduling systems use smart calendar integrations and AI algorithms to eliminate the friction of manual coordination. This offers numerous benefits:
On the convenience front, instead of playing email tennis, prospects can easily select their preferred meeting time from automatically suggested options that fit their calendar. This results in a smooth, stress-free booking experience for clients.
Automated systems also make it far easier to identify time slots when all required attendees are available according to their calendar data. This leads to up to 40% higher meeting attendance rates compared to manual bookings.
Further, the system cross-checks connected calendars to prevent any overlapping or conflicting appointments before confirming meetings. This avoids embarrassing double bookings.
The algorithms also instantly factor in time zones across attendee locations to schedule meetings at suitable times convenient for all parties.
By eliminating tedious manual coordination, automation also reduces stress and confusion. Salespeople regain up to 4 hours per week earlier wasted just on scheduling. This time is better spent interacting with customers.
As a result, higher meeting attendance rates plus more time for selling activities directly boosts sales productivity. Automated scheduling also enables better forecasting, as analytics help sales managers more accurately predict and model team productivity based on optimized booking.
Last minute meeting changes or cancellations can also be accommodated more quickly with automated systems. And for clients, the frictionless scheduling process improves brand perception.
In summary, for both salespeople and their clients, automated scheduling creates a smoother, stress-free booking process leading to more productive sales meetings.
Key Features of Automated Scheduling Platforms
Intelligent automated scheduling platforms offer a diverse range of features to streamline coordinating and booking meetings:
One of the core features is availability aggregation – the ability to instantly collect and collate availability data across connected calendars to identify mutual openings suitable for all attendees.
The platforms also provide bi-directional syncing with popular calendar apps like Office 365, Google Calendar, iCal, and Outlook. This gives them real-time visibility into attendees’ availability.
Using smart algorithms and machine learning, the systems can recommend optimal meeting times and dates based on attendees’ unique preferences and habits.
Customizable booking options allow users to specify meeting duration, add buffer time between meetings, select repeat meetings, and configure other preferences to fit their needs.
One-click booking then enables instantly reserving suggested time slots with no tedious email back-and-forth.
Post booking, automated confirmation emails and reminder notifications ensure clients remember and show up for meetings.
Browser-based or dedicated mobile apps allow scheduling on-the-go from anywhere too.
Analytics help track time savings, meeting attendance, and other metrics to optimize scheduling effectiveness over time.
And tight integrations with CRM platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Dynamics 365 embeds automated scheduling into the sales workflow.
Some tools even allow collecting payments or deposits during the booking process to improve cash flow.
Top Automated Scheduling Solutions
Dozens of robust automated scheduling platforms are available today to meet varying needs:
Calendly is the pioneer in the market and popular for its ease-of-use and seamless integration across calendars. It offers useful features like availability aggregation, configurable meeting buffers, and embeddable booking pages.
Cirrus Insight is a top Gmail and Calendar add-on that builds scheduling and tracking right into your inbox for maximum productivity. It provides confirmation emails, calendar syncing, and activity tracking.
HubSpot Meetings is the native scheduling tool within HubSpot’s CRM, allowing easy booking links in emails that sync with the platform. It offers basic free plans and more advanced paid versions.
TimeTrade is a full-featured platform with wide integration capabilities, including with Salesforce and Slack. Its “maestro” functionality helps optimize complex multi-attendee meetings.
Reclaim.ai integrates with Office 365 and G Suite to analyze calendars and suggest smart booking options using AI. It allows easy meeting configuration and confirmations.
x.ai uses natural language processing to understand meeting requests and coordinate suitable timings autonomously through email.
Acuity Scheduling focuses on serving small businesses with calendar syncing, custom booking forms, payment processing and SMS reminders.
YouCanBook.me offers an intuitive interface and unique time zone detection to automatically display correct times for attendees globally.
ScheduleOnce emphasizes flexibility and convenience, letting attendees quickly reschedule bookings from a central dashboard.
The Future of Automated Scheduling
The automated scheduling market is forecasted to grow at over 17% annually. Adoption is expected to accelerate, with over 98% of meeting scheduling automated by 2030. Here are some predictions:
Scheduling will get seamlessly built into mainstream CRM platforms like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle Sales Cloud etc.
AI will power more advanced features like predictive availability suggestions based on past habits, real-time rescheduling when meetings run over, and group polling for complex multi-attendee meetings.
Assistants will gain complete visibility into employees’ personal and work calendars to further optimize scheduling.
Industry-specific versions will be tailored to the unique scheduling needs of verticals like real estate, healthcare, financial advisory etc.
Solutions will be mobile-first to enable on-the-go scheduling for today’s mobile salesforce with minimal manual data entry required.
Virtual meeting coordination will improve through tight integrations with video conferencing tools.
Automated scheduling will expand beyond sales roles to become the norm for assistants, recruiters, finance teams etc.
And the market will likely see consolidation with 1-2 dominant enterprise scheduling tools emerging across industries.
The Way Ahead
With so many benefits for improving sales productivity and experiences, automated scheduling adoption is destined to accelerate. As tools get smarter and integrate more deeply into workflows, they will become indispensable.
For forward-thinking sales teams, now is the ideal time to try leading solutions and get ahead of the curve before automated scheduling becomes the new normal. This technology paves the way for the future of frictionless, optimized meeting coordination.