Running your financial advisory firm means juggling many responsibilities, and you always have a lot on your plate. As a small business owner, you are in the relationship business, and that requires managing a constant stream of meetings with prospects, clients, team members, centers of influence, and other people in your network – flawlessly while getting everything else on your to-do list done.
Managing your calendar can feel like a full-time job on its own. Using an automated scheduling tool, such as Acuity Scheduling, Calendly, or OnceHub, is a must.
Why use a scheduler
In researching time management and productivity, New York Times bestselling author Dave Kerpen discovered that the richest, most successful, and most productive people rely on their calendars, rather than to-do lists, to get things done. He’s often quoted as stating, “If it’s not on my calendar, it won’t get done. But if it is on my calendar, it will get done.”
If you put the things you need to accomplish throughout the day on your calendar, you see what you have to get done and assess whether you have the time and space to do it. Using an online scheduler takes your calendar to the next level. Here’s how:
Support Time Blocking
As an independent financial advisor, you’re running a business that requires adding meetings with a wide range of people to your calendar throughout the week. Where will you fit them all in?
If you’re familiar with productivity hacks, you may have heard of the term “time blocking.” It’s a time management method that involves scheduling every minute of your day, breaking it down into blocks dedicated to certain tasks. The idea is to promote focus and minimize context switching, which can slow you down as your brain adjusts from working on one kind of task to another.
You may want to block off uninterrupted time throughout the week for tasks such as reading financial news, learning, accounting and admin, and of course, meetings. You may even want to take it a step further to block off certain days and times specifically for prospect, internal team or client meetings.
Speaking to a prospect requires a different frame of mind than to a long-time client. Jumping from one kind of meeting to the next, back-to-back, can be challenging. Or maybe you can only manage one prospect call per day without feeling drained. Whatever the case, being intentional about how you block off your calendar to align with how you work best can be a gamechanger. A scheduler will help you achieve a time-blocked calendar that supports your best work.
Activate Automation
Putting technology to work for you can be a huge time-saver in your business, and it can offer peace of mind. Because running your firm requires handling so many different tasks, it can be easy to make scheduling mistakes.
When it comes to scheduling meetings, automating this aspect of your calendar management frees up your time and ensures everything is checked and synched digitally in real-time. Even if you have a skilled and highly capable executive assistant, there’s no longer any reason to bog that person down with unnecessary minutia.
You no longer have to go back and forth asking, “When are you available?” or saying, “That time doesn’t work for me” or “Mondays aren’t good; can you do Tuesday?” Worse yet, trying to arrange a meeting over email means the slot that was open a few hours ago was taken by the time you get a response. As you’re probably aware, this can be a real headache.
Automating meeting scheduling makes the process run smoothly and seamlessly.
Enhance Your Client Experience
Using a scheduler is not only convenient for you and your team, but also for prospects and clients. The goal of your client experience is to make people continue working with you, and something as seemingly simple as smooth scheduling is one of the many touchpoints they have with your firm. Knowing they can get on your calendar without having to pick up the phone or wait for a reply is likely to make them feel taken care of.
The tool you choose will even allow for rescheduling, which means people will avoid the awkward conversations that come along with cancelling or postponing a meeting.
A word of caution: Some people – especially older individuals or those who are technology averse – may prefer to go the old-fashioned route and not to use a scheduler. Always make it clear that this isn’t your only option. They should be able to call or email instead. But this reaction is increasingly uncommon, so having a few holdouts should not deter you from moving forward.
Improve Operations Management
In addition to basic automation, scheduling tools can integrate with other technology you use to upgrade the way you handle operations – both for your team’s benefit and the benefit of the client experience.
Depending on the level of sophistication you want to implement, you may be able to:
- Include key forms, paperwork, agendas, and more in the meeting confirmation email.
- Ask prospects to complete a questionnaire in advance, qualifying them or determining they would not be a good fit.
- Trigger updates in your CRM, moving them along your pipeline, or trigger tasks in your project management system.
Beyond meetings, the scheduler might plug into your CRM, email platform, project management tool, video conferencing tool, and other systems to streamline processes and make your life easier.
Calendar Scheduling Tool Options
A quick Google search will reveal a long list of scheduling tools, so you may wonder which one is best for your firm. Some of the features, such as invoicing, payments, and accounting, may not be relevant to your business. Here are some of the most popular tools, including the one we use at Crystal Marketing Solutions (CMS), as well as other popular choices among our clients.
Acuity Scheduling
Acuity Scheduling, now owned by Squarespace, is the scheduler that best serves our needs at CMS. It’s a cloud-based tool that includes automated scheduling, customizable web-intake forms, and client-database integration. It allows for follow-ups and reminder notifications and includes customized branding and templates.
Acuity syncs with popular digital calendars and connects seamlessly with Google Workspace, Office365, and other business management technology. It also integrates with the video conferencing tools, Zoom, and Google Meet.
It is the best option to support my business processes.
Calendly
Calendly offers every feature Acuity provides with similar pricing but a different interface and user experience.
It’s a popular tool because it has added features, such as customized workflows and enhanced follow-ups, and it includes additional custom integrations, such as Microsoft Teams, Webex, Salesforce, and Hubspot. It also has user controls with varying access levels, which are useful if you have an assistant who helps manage your calendar. Plus, it has features that may be more helpful for teams, such as shared events scheduling.
If your priority is sophisticated scheduling options and particular integrations, Calendly might be the right fit for your firm.
OnceHub: ScheduleOnce
OnceHub bills itself as a “lead acceleration platform” that started as a simple scheduling tool and expanded over time into a multi-product platform with various advanced capabilities. Its ScheduleOnce product includes features similar to Acuity and Calendly, focusing on supporting teams and managing leads.
It also has a wide range of calendar, workflow, CRM, and video conferencing integrations in addition to OnceHub’s other products, including chatbots, smart forms, and an automated lead qualification tool.
You can’t go wrong with any of these tools. But think carefully about your needs, consider your existing tech stack (the technology you already use in your business), and which integrations and capabilities are most important to you.
Using a Scheduler for Your Financial Advisory Firm
Once you decide to use a scheduling tool, the next step is to integrate it into your website and add a link to your email signature, social media profiles, and anywhere else that makes sense for your business. No matter which tool you choose, you’ll save time, gain peace of mind, and enjoy the increased productivity and benefits from the enhanced client experience that automated scheduling creates. You’ll wish you’d started using a scheduling tool sooner.