I love to save time, but I also love to save money. That's why in this video I'm going to show you how to save both by combining meeting scheduling with your customer management.
You're probably already familiar with scheduling tools such as Calendly. It's a very popular service used by many. However, it's going to cost you something additional and it's also something additional for you to manage.
So what if you could take all of the functionality here and combine it with a powerful CRM System? Well, Pipedrive, one of my favorite CRM tools, has done just that.
Not only is Pipedrive's Meeting scheduler easy to use, but I feel that the user experience is actually better than Calendly and integrates directly with your contacts and your deals.
Better user experience
Now, before we get into the setup, let's take a quick look at the look and feel because what I love about the meeting scheduler within Pipedrive is that it's big, it's bold, and I think the navigation is even easier for your users.
So here at the top, you can see that we have the title of the meeting. We have the location, and you can add as much detail within the description as you like.
And then down below, rather than having Calendly's default full month calendar, we've got something that I think is a lot easier to navigate. So whether I want to book a time for this week or next week, it's easier to go back and forth.
I'm going to select this Wednesday, and also things stay on the same page. So let's see, maybe 1:00 PM works well for me. Now I can enter in my information and confirm that booking.
Meeting scheduling in Pipedrive
Let's jump back into our Pipedrive Account and see how we can add further schedules and manage our existing ones as well. So here we can find the meeting scheduling option in a variety of different places.
Here I am within my calendar and it will always be available at the top of the screen. If I jump over into one of my deals, let me jump into this deal here. Remember, we can email any of our clients directly from within Pipedrive. And from within my email, I can always add my meeting scheduling link here as well.
And if I happen to be viewing some of my contacts, once again, I have access to that meeting scheduling link because we can email from a variety of different places right here from within Pipedrive.
Creating your meeting link
So I'm going to come here and select Manage availability. Here is the Discovery Call that I set up already, but let's go ahead and create a new scheduling link. So our first option here is how long should this meeting be?
And let's say I want to make this 30 minutes in length. I'm going to choose that option here. When is this availability going to be active?
I can either set a future date or say that I want it to be active from right now, and I can either put this out indefinitely or maybe I only want to make this particular meeting, this particular call available from now until the end of April.
Again, you can always come back in here and edit any of these options.
Then thirdly, we can choose what days of the week. Do we want to be made available for these meetings? Well, I'm going to come down here to Tuesday and unlike Calendly's somewhat complicated way of specifying times and dates, I can simply just click and drag.
Maybe I want to make myself available, 9:00 to 12:00 in the morning, and then once again from 3:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon. So I can do that here.
And rather than hit save and go to another day of the week, right from this same dialogue, I'm going to say I want to add it to Thursday as well. I'm going to hit Save. And now I've got my schedule. I've got my availability listed right here.
Now, before we select Continue to meeting details, it's important for us to select our Buffer and time settings. Now, there's a couple of defaults in here already. We may want to add some buffer time before or after the event.
So if you want to make sure that you have perhaps 15 minutes before your very next event or afterwards, you can choose that here. Here you can choose if the invitee can select times in different intervals.
Now, for me, I prefer things on the half hour. I don't want people booking me at let's say 3:15 or 9:45. But if you have a different preference, you can make that selection here as well.
Then the last two are very important, so don't ignore these two options. The first is the shortest notice to book you. Meaning, if you shared this link right now, could they book you 30 minutes from now?
Well, that might be too soon for a lot of us. So I'm going to say I want a minimum of four hours notice before they can book me.
Meaning, if I sent them the link right now, the earliest they could book me would be about 2:30 in the afternoon, my local time, because it's currently 10:30 AM. And then lastly, how far in the future can someone book you?
Now, unlike Calendly, we have a number of default options here, but I think that this might actually be easier. Do you really need 27 days, or 32 days, or 56 days or a particular number of weeks? We have between one, two or three weeks or a month, two months, or six months in advance.
So maybe the most I want someone to be able to book me out in advance is one month.
Adding meeting details
So I'm going to select that option here. I'm going to select Continue to our meeting details. And this is the final section. This is the last page that we need to configure. The first thing is to give our meeting a name.
So maybe this is going to be a 1:1 Call or a 1:1 Meeting. Here under location, we can either specify where it's going to be a phone call, a Zoom meeting, or in person. Maybe you want to add an address here.
And Pipedrive does integrate with the three most popular video conferencing tools. So whether you use Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, you can use that integration here. Here you can adjust the company name. This is being pulled over directly from my Pipedrive account.
And then lastly, we can choose what is required when it comes to the fields? Now, just like with Calendly and other popular scheduling tools, name and email is going to be required.
You can choose if you want to require a phone number, but you can also choose to add as many additional fields as well. So for example, do you want to add some specific questions, maybe some things for them to consider ahead of time or just collect some more information.
You can add those details here as well in addition to adding your own custom footer. Then on the right-hand side of this screen, we have two additional helpful options. These are only visible to you, so this has to do with how this is tracked or recorded within your Pipedrive account.
So do you want to record this as a call, a meeting, a task, a deadline, an email, or lunch? In most cases, you're probably going to choose one of these first two, or maybe it's a task depending on how you manage your customers and manage your projects within Pipedrive.
And then lastly, you can add a specific note. So if you want to add a detailed note specific to this meeting type, you can add this here and it will be included in that user's record.
I'm going to come down here and select Share as a link. And now I can go ahead and copy this link and share it with anyone that I like. But better yet, now that this new availability is saved, I can share it anywhere here within Pipedrive.
Scheduling example
So for example, maybe I need to setup a time to meet with Phyllis here. I'm going to, of course, give a subject and give a nice message, but when I'm ready, I can come up here to the Meeting scheduler and say, "Hey, let's put in this 1:1 Meeting."
See my schedule and book a time here. Now they have a direct link to that booking calendar, and I didn't have to write in any of this text. But let me show you perhaps the best reason for integrating your meeting scheduler with a CRM. Here I am back with that Discovery call that we looked at earlier.
But this time I'm going to pretend that I'm someone who is filling out this form. I filled out all the details here, and I'm going to say, confirm that booking. As the potential customer, I'm brought to this confirmation screen.
And of course, I've been emailed that scheduling link and it has been added to my calendar as well. But if I jump back into my Pipedrive Account, and if I look at my contacts, (sighs) look at this.
At the bottom of my list is my brand-new contact, and I didn't have to enter in any of this information. I have the name, I have their email address and their phone number.
And when I click on his account, here I have all of that information available to me, including here is our discovery call listed here so I can keep track and keep record of this customer engagement.
There is no copy and paste, there is no complicated integration that I need to make with Calendly or some other tool. I have it all here directly from within my CRM.
So if you'd like to save time and money and make it easier for both yourself and your clients to book time, click the link in the description down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
