This past week when coaching clients, I found myself in talking about appointment scheduling more than a few times. This week I was focusing with clients on maximizing their time in order to maximize dollars and their free time. What I discovered is that many of my clients who are small business owners are spending hours of their day driving from place to place trying to make appointments with clients, potential clients, networking one on one meetings, etc. This is not only an inefficient use of time, it's a waste of gas and money! And let's not forget that your time is a valuable resource as well. How many hours are you spending in your car that could have you being productive on some other aspect of your business?
Now I know it's not always possible to do this, but I challenged these clients to take control of their appointments and have clients and others come to them to meet. I manage to make this my way of doing business at least twice a week and am working to get it programmed into an even tighter schedule as soon as I possibly can. What I do is let those who wish to meet with me or those I'm trying to get an appointment with know that, for example, I'll be at a local coffee house on Friday afternoon meeting with other clients. I let them know what time I will be available and ask them to join me for a coffee or a soda. Honestly, this way of booking appointments really does work. Most people are happy to meet you where you are and will gladly drive to you. Not only is is a time saver but if I do happen to have an hour between appointments I can have my laptop with me and be productive.
Don't forget that by scheduling appointments as often as you can in this fashion also allows you to see more people in the shortest amount of time. I try to pick a very central location that is close to a freeway and that everyone can easily find. I also recommend getting to your first appointment a little early in order to scope out and grab the quietest corner in the place so that you can conduct business in peace and quiet.
Be in control of your appointments. Block certain days of the week to meet with people. Find a great location and ask that your appointments come to you. By doing so you'll be saving time, saving money and -- I bet -- making even more money in no time!
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