Learn the most direct way to schedule meetings the first time and avoid the back and forth emails

Let’s stop doing this to each other…

In a client service based business like Sharp Hue, we schedule many meetings, so it’s beneficial to minimize the time spent in planning meetings with clients.

Let me suggest a better way to schedule a meeting that saves valuable time.

We’ve all sent or received a meeting request that was polite and had good intentions of letting the other party schedule at their convenience. Examples: “Let me know if you’re free this week,” or “Do you have some time available?”

The problem with this type of request is that it’s open-ended and initiates a counterproductive sequence of back and forth e-mails. In fact, if you start this way, the minimum interactions you’ll have with the other party is a total of 5 communications, and sometimes 7 or more.

Let’s stop doing this to each other…

Requester: Do you have time this week to meet and review project feedback?Invitee: Sure, how about Thursday afternoon or Friday morning?
Requester: I’m free between 1pm and 4pm CST on Thursday
Invitee: Cool, let’s go with 3:30pm Thursday
Requester: I need to start by 3:30 to make it to my 4pm, can you do 3pm
Invitee: Oh right, no problem, 3pm is good.
Requester: Great, thank you. What’s the best phone number to reach you?
Invitee: (123) 123–1234, please send me a calendar invite

Here’s a better way…

Requester:
I want to review the progress of the project and get your feedback. Do you have 30 minutes for a web meeting? Here’s my availability:

MON 6/18 | 1pm, 2pm, 3pm EDT
TUE 6/19 | 11am, 12pm, 4pm EDT
WED 6/20 | 9am, 11am, 3pm, 4pm EDT

Invitee: Tuesday 11am EDT works for me
Requester: Excellent, thank you. Calendar invite is on the way.

Several reasons why this approach is better…

1. Specifies the length of the requested meeting
2. Defines meeting start times instead of ambiguous ranges
3. Specifies dates and days of the week to avoid vague words like “tomorrow” or “mid-week.”
4. Specifies type of meeting (phone, in-person, or web meeting). In my opinion, web meetings are hands down the best kind for progress meetings because they allow you to share a screen, have an audio line, and most web meeting services automatically generate a calendar invite.
5. Displayed in an easy-to-compare grid of options. Sometimes we include options that are available, though are a little less convenient for us. We find that everyone has their sweet spot availability and by listing all top choices along with some less favorable ones, we avoid the back & forth.
6. The timezone is visible on each line for emphasis and visual repetition. We find there are fewer time zone misunderstandings this way. We also specify the timezone in the client’s timezone, so they don’t have to do any “calendar math.”
7. Signals to the invitee your time is valuable. The brief visual presentation shows that you are efficiently presenting ten clear options for meeting times and asking them to pick one that accommodates you.

I’ve been using this scheduling format for over two years with great success. I’ve taken time to teach this method to our team members, and they see similar results of time savings whenever they’re scheduling meetings with clients. We’ve also noticed that our scheduling approach tends to have fewer cancellations. We can’t prove it scientifically, though we like to think it’s because we do a good job of setting meeting expectations clearly and directly.

A thought about calendaring AI: You may have seen calendar booking software and digital AI assistants that help solve the back and forth email scheduling problem. These tools are fun and somewhat useful though I’ve stopped using them because they need a lot more “rules” to work with the flexibility and underlying reason for scheduling meetings that I want as an entrepreneur. I know these tools will get better in the future and I look forward to trying again soon.

Conclusion: taking a little time to save someone else time is a win-win for everybody no matter what tool or methodology you use. I would love for you to try out this approach and see if it helps you save some time. It’ll be a great pleasure when I look at your next meeting request to me in this format!

Bonus Tip for Scheduling Mastery!

If you schedule meetings in a country that observes daylight savings time, then you should use the correct time zone abbreviation. You may not have realized it, though there is a difference between CST and CDT!

“S” is for Standard time during the time of year when daylight savings time is not in effect. Typically from November to March.

“D” is for Daylight time during the time of year when clocks are adjusted, and the amount of daylight is longer. Typically from March to November.

Sometimes while communicating in the correct daylight savings abbreviation, the other person will reply with the opposite. In those cases, it’s best not to seem pretentious about your new found knowledge, and you can write “Central Time” excluding the S or D.