Getting the prospect to agree to book a meeting with you is challenging enough.
But what if you’re also making it difficult for them to schedule a meeting with you once they are ready?
If your sales process involves numerous back-and-forth emails and phone calls just to schedule an appointment, your prospects will find all of these exhausting.
They might turn down the opportunity to hop on a meeting with you, even if they like your offer and have a real need for a solution. Simply because the resistance is too high.
The result? Missed quotas for you and serious revenue loss for your company.
Research shows that 70% of people choose the company that approaches them first after they have shown interest. And with your current method of scheduling an appointment, there is a high chance that you are losing business to your competitors.
So, how do you set up a hassle-free scheduling process that offers zero resistance for prospects to book meetings?
Three words: Sales scheduling software.
In this article, we have listed the 15 best sales scheduling software, benefits, and factors to consider while choosing the right software.
What Is Sales Scheduling Software?
Sales scheduling software helps sales professionals manage their appointments, meetings, and schedules.
These tools can integrate with your online calendars, automate reminders for your meetings, and provide a user-friendly interface for your prospects to book sales meetings without much effort. It's a convenient way to book meetings with clients, prospects, or team members without the back-and-forth hassle of traditional scheduling methods.
Why Do You Need Sales Scheduling Software?
Having sales scheduling software simplifies the process of booking an appointment, helping you organize, track, and manage your appointments efficiently so you can focus on what you do best – closing deals.
Let's dive deeper into the benefits of the scheduling software:
Improve Time Efficiency
To book a meeting, you'd need to send emails or make phone calls back and forth, trying to find a time that works for both the customer and for you. This can be quite a hassle, especially when you have to do this for dozens of prospective customers daily.
Scheduling software does this in seconds, saving you heaps of time. When someone wants to book a meeting with your sales team, the software shows all the available slots to them so that they can pick a convenient time and book the meeting instantly.
Eliminate Double Bookings
Double bookings can be a major source of frustration and confusion for both salespeople and potential customers.
With sales scheduling software, sales reps don't have to worry about accidentally booking two meetings at the same time. It integrates with the rep’s personal calendar, continuously checks their availability, and automatically blocks out time slots when they're already committed.
Reduce No-Shows and Cancellations
Ever had a meeting canceled at the last minute or worse, no one showed up? It's frustrating and can disrupt your whole day. Scheduling software sends automatic reminders to both you and your prospects, minimizing cancellations and no-shows.
For instance, if you schedule a meeting for next Tuesday, the software can send a reminder on Monday and then another a few hours before the meeting. This reduces the chances of someone forgetting or changing their plans at the last minute.
Improve Lead Conversion
One common challenge in the sales process is the delay in contacting leads who have shown interest. With this software, leads are instantly connected to sales reps, reducing the risk of losing their interest during the wait.
By reducing friction in the scheduling process and allowing leads to book meetings easily, sales teams can potentially see an increase in lead engagement and conversion rates. A simplified scheduling process can enhance the lead's experience, making them more likely to engage in a sales conversation.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Using scheduling software, sales teams can manage all their appointments, access meeting histories, and gain insights into their scheduling patterns. The software will provide data-driven insights on peak meeting times, no-show rates, or the most engaged leads, helping sales teams refine their strategies and make informed decisions.
15 Best Sales Scheduling Software for 2023
If you are looking to automate the booking process, reduce no-shows, and provide valuable post-meeting follow-up options, here are 15 best sales scheduling software you need to check out:
1. Schedule IQ
Schedule IQ by Klenty is an end-to-end meeting scheduling platform designed to help sales, marketing, and customer success teams book meetings faster. It helps you organize, plan, and distribute the leads that come in, ensuring that no opportunity is missed.
Key features:
- With Schedule IQ, you get to create different types of events and interactions with your prospects, like discovery calls, demo calls, support calls, and more. This not only helps you label your meetings but also identifies your prospect’s stage in the sales process.
- The flexible scheduling feature enables reps to define their availability based on specific hours and days. This helps in booking meetings at a convenient time for both prospects and the reps, ensuring work-life balance and preventing last-minute scheduling conflicts.
- Reps can share personalized booking links with prospects. This gives them direct access to book meetings and helps reps appear organized and approachable.
- With the Website Embed feature, you can seamlessly integrate calendars into your website, enabling visitors to book meetings directly from the website. You can customize the booking page to match your branding and style to enhance customer satisfaction.
- Users get a complete overview of their past and upcoming interactions and events. Reps can easily check their calendar, apply filters, and sort by dates, event types, or specific customers. This helps them plan their days better and track their performance.
- Schedule IQ offers 3 customizable routing methods:
- Flexible Routing allows you to distribute meetings based on availability randomly.
- Strict or Equal routing allows you to allocate an equal number of meetings among your reps.
- Weighted routing lets you route meetings based on pre-defined weightage to assign the right lead to the right rep.
- Free: $0
- Meeting Booker: $12/seat/month (billed annually) and $15/seat/month (billed monthly)
- Lead Router: $20/seat/month (billed annually) and $25/seat/month (billed monthly)
2. Calendly
Calendly is an online scheduling and appointment booking tool that helps individuals and businesses streamline the process of setting up meetings, appointments, and events. It provides an easy and efficient way for people to schedule time with you, eliminating the need for back-and-forth emails or phone calls to find a suitable meeting time.
Key features:
- Users can connect their calendars (such as Google Calendar, Outlook, or iCloud) to Calendly, and the platform will automatically check their availability to suggest suitable meeting times.
- It offers customizable scheduling, so you can set rules for when and how people can book appointments with you. This allows you to control the types of meetings and the duration of appointments.
- Calendly automatically converts time zones to ensure that meetings are scheduled at the correct times for all participants, regardless of their locations.
- It integrates with popular productivity tools and CRMs like Zoho, Hubspot, Zoom, Slack, and Calendly APIs.
Pricing:
- Basic: Free
- Standard: $10 per user/month
- Teams: $16 per user/month
- Enterprise: Custom
3. Chili Piper
Chili Piper is a software platform that helps in automating scheduling, lead routing, and appointment setting, with a particular emphasis on enhancing sales and customer success teams' productivity and efficiency.
Key features:
- It offers personalized scheduling links, round-robin distribution, and team availability views to simplify the scheduling process.
- Users can embed Chili Piper's scheduling widget on their websites, enabling potential customers to book meetings instantly.
- Users can set up automated email reminders and notifications for scheduled meetings to reduce no-shows
- Chili Piper allows users to create custom rules and workflows for lead routing, meeting scheduling, and follow-up processes. This flexibility caters to the specific needs of each organization.
Pricing:
- Instant Booker: $15 per user/month billed annually or $22.5 per user/month billed monthly
- Handoff: $25 per user/month billed annually or $37.5 per user/month billed monthly
- Form Concierge: $30 per user/month billed annually or $45 per user/month billed monthly
- Distro: $30 per user/month billed annually or $45 per user/month billed monthly
4. Acuity Scheduling
Acuity Scheduling is an online appointment scheduling software commonly used by a wide range of professionals, including sales teams, service providers, consultants, therapists, and more, to manage their appointments and bookings efficiently. It has gained popularity mainly because of its user-friendly interface.
Key features:
- Users can create custom intake forms, questionnaires, and waivers that clients can fill out during the booking process.
- Acuity supports group scheduling, allowing users to offer classes, workshops, or group sessions and enabling multiple people to book together.
- It offers integrations with various third-party applications, such as Zoom for virtual meetings, MailChimp for email marketing, and QuickBooks for accounting.
Pricing:
- Emerging: $16 per user/month billed annually or $20 per user/month billed monthly
- Growing: $27 per user/month billed annually or $34 per user/month billed monthly
- Powerhouse: $49 per user/month billed annually or $61 per user/month billed monthly
5. Revenue Hero
RevenueHero is a tool that helps businesses manage their appointments and meetings more efficiently. It helps your sales teams manage their schedule, automate follow-ups, and connect with the customers quickly.
Key features:
- RevenueHero lets you create a personalized calendar where people can see when you're available. This helps you avoid scheduling hassles.
- It sends automatic reminders to you and your prospects before your meetings. This ensures that your meeting is on track.
- The software provides data on your scheduling patterns and meeting history. By looking at this, you can assess the performance and productivity of the reps.
Pricing:
- Inbound Essential: $25 per user/month billed annually or $35 per user/month billed monthly
- Outbound Essential: $20 per user/month billed annually or $25 per user/month billed monthly
6. Zoho Bookings
Zoho Bookings is an online booking and appointment scheduling software designed to help businesses and professionals manage their appointments, reservations, and availability more efficiently. It is a part of the Zoho suite of business software and offers several features to streamline appointment booking and scheduling processes.
Key features:
- Zoho Bookings allows prospects or customers to book appointments with your business or service online. You can customize your availability, and prospects can choose the time slots that work for them.
- The tool can accommodate businesses and clients in different regions, with support for multiple languages and time zones.
- It provides valuable insights into your booking data, allowing you to track appointment history, customer preferences, and other relevant metrics.
Pricing:
- Basic: $4.33 per user/month billed annually or $5.77 per user/month billed monthly
- Premium: $6.49 per user/month billed annually or $8.65 per user/month billed monthly
7. YouCanBookMe
YouCanBookMe is a popular tool for individuals, businesses, and organizations that need to manage their schedules and allow others to book appointments with them. It lets you create a personalized booking page with their branding, where clients or colleagues can view their availability and schedule appointments. You can customize the booking form to collect specific information from clients during the booking process.
Key features:
- You can control the meeting slots by adding buffer times or after meetings. This helps in giving your team a little break between their hectic hours of back-to-back meetings or to prepare for another meeting.
- After the meeting, the tool allows you to send automated follow-up emails with more details, request feedback, or simply thank them for their time.
- You can add custom fields to emails and messages to personalize the experience for each prospect.
Pricing:
- Basic: Free
- Paid Plan: $10.80 per user/month billed annually or $12 per user/month billed monthly
8. Doodle
Doodle is an online tool for planning and organizing your schedule and meetings. It helps people work together to set up appointments and is accessible on both computers and mobile devices.
Key features:
- You can create a customized booking page with Doodle to give your visitors a more enhanced experience while navigating through your website.
- It lets you attach the meeting link to your email signature so prospects can easily schedule meetings without leaving their inbox.
- Doodle gives sales managers a complete view of the volume and type of calls booked so they can identify what’s working and what’s not.
Pricing:
- Free
- Pro: $6.95 per user per month paid annually or $14.95 per user/month billed monthly
- Team: $8.95 per user per month paid annually or $14.95 per user/month billed monthly
- Enterprise: Contact the sales team for pricing.
9. Microsoft Bookings
Microsoft Bookings is an appointment scheduling and booking tool offered by Microsoft as part of its productivity suite, Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365). It is designed to help businesses and organizations, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, manage their appointment scheduling and customer bookings more efficiently.
Key features:
- You can create a personalized booking page with their branding, logo, and services, making it easy for customers to schedule appointments.
- It seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft 365 applications, such as Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint, for better collaboration and communication.
- Microsoft Bookings is accessible via web browsers and has a mobile app, allowing businesses and customers to schedule and manage appointments on the go.
Pricing:
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $6.00 user/month billed annually
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $12.50 user/month billed annually
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium: $19.80 user/month billed annually
- Microsoft 365 Apps for business: $8.25 user/month billed annually
10. Thryv
Thryv is a software platform designed to help small businesses or service providers manage their operations more efficiently. It offers a range of features and tools to assist with various aspects of running a small business.
Key features:
- You can send automated reminders for appointments or events to reduce appointment no-shows and empty seats.
- It helps simplify the calendar overview and allows you to sync multiple staff accounts, share calendars, and book appointments to align your team.
- The tool allows customers to book appointments and services directly from your Google Business listing.
Pricing:
- Basic: free
- Plus: $20 per user per month
- Professional: $30 per user per month
11. CalendarHero
Calendar Hero is another tool that enables you to book, organize, and keep track of meetings. Its features include calendar syncing, automated reminders, personalized links, and more.
Key features:
- You can book 1:1, group, and video meetings automatically using your availability and different scheduling methods.
- With CalendarHero, you can create & reuse templates for all your meeting types with custom settings for video, duration, availability, and more.
- It lets you sync calendars from Google, Outlook, Office 365, Exchange, and iCloud to prevent double-bookings.
- You can embed the CalendarHero meeting scheduler on your web page and engage with customers instantly.
Pricing:
- Basic: Free
- Professional: $8 per month
- Team: $12 per user per month
12. SavvyCal
SavvyCal is an online scheduling and appointment booking tool designed to streamline the process of scheduling meetings, appointments, and events. It provides a range of features that make it easier for sales teams to manage their calendars, book appointments, and improve their productivity.
Key features:
- Users have the flexibility to define their availability based on specific hours, days, or recurring patterns.
- You can set buffer times between appointments to prevent back-to-back bookings and allow for breaks or focus on other selling activities.
- The platform provides data and analytics on your meeting bookings, allowing you to track metrics such as appointment volume and conversion rates.
Pricing:
- Free plan: $0
- Basic plan: $12 per user per month
- Premium plan: $20 per user per month
13. BookIt
BookIt by LeanData is a meeting scheduling tool that has a wide range of features to ensure that leads are properly distributed to the right sales, enabling companies to enhance the meeting booking experience.
Key features:
- With BookIt, you can create meeting types that best serve your customers and unique business needs and easily integrate with solutions such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Google Calendar, Google Analytics, and more.
- Leveraging the CRM data, it matches the right rep for your prospect. This is helpful if you have a large sales team.
- The platform can prioritize leads based on various criteria, such as lead score, account value, or engagement level, helping sales teams focus on the most promising opportunities.
Pricing:
- Standard: $39 USD per user license/month
- Advanced: $49 USD per user license/month
- Premium: $59 USD per user license/month
14. MeetFox
MeetFox is a platform designed to simplify and optimize online scheduling, video conferencing, and appointment booking, primarily targeted at professionals and businesses that rely on appointments, consultations, and meetings as part of their services.
Key features:
- With MeetFox, you can have 3 kinds of website embeddings: pop-up widget, pop-up widget, and inline embed (embed a booking page into any part of your website).
- It supports multiple time zones, making it suitable for professionals who work with clients or partners across different regions.
- MeetFox sends automated reminders to both users and clients/participants to reduce no-shows and ensure that everyone is prepared for their scheduled appointments.
Pricing:
- Free
- Pro: $10 per user/month billed annually or $15 per user/month billed monthly
- Premium: $35 per user/month billed annually or $42 per user/month billed monthly
15. Cirrus Insight
Cirrus Insight is a software platform that is designed to enhance the productivity and efficiency of sales and customer relationship management (CRM) teams. It is known for its deep integration with email and calendar applications, particularly Gmail and Microsoft Outlook, and its tight integration with Salesforce.
Key features:
- You can define meeting types, set your availability, manage multiple business hours, and create calendar cards all directly within your Cirrus Insight Sidebar. Link your Google or Outlook calendar to your Sidebar, and control your calendar availability without leaving your inbox.
- You can personalize your booking page on Cirrus Insights with your brand, a photo, a bio, and contact details. This helps you include all the information your prospects require.
- The Calendar View option lets you choose days and times when you're free for meetings. This works well if you or your team members are in different offices or have various activities on different days.
Pricing:
- Salesforce Sync: $10 per user/month billed annually
- Pro: $21 per user/month billed annually
- Expert: $29 per user/month billed annually
How To Choose an Ideal Sales Scheduling Software?
So far, we’ve covered a lot of ground on sales scheduling software—what it means, how it simplifies the process of booking meetings, and the 15 best tools available in the market today.
But, how do you choose the right sales scheduling software for your team?
Here are 7 major aspects you need to consider while choosing the software to streamline your sales process and enhance your overall efficiency:
Flexible To Use
Look for software that allows you to customize how appointments are scheduled. You can specify appointment lengths, buffer time durations between appointments, and availability based on your business needs.
Integrations
Choose software that can seamlessly connect with tools and software you already use, like your email, customer relationship management (CRM) system, or other tools. This integration enables efficient scheduling of sales meetings.
Calendar Syncing
Ensure that the scheduling software can sync with your calendar of choice, such as Google Calendar or Outlook. This way, you won't double-book or miss appointments, as everything is coordinated in one place.
Automated Messaging
The software should have the ability to send automated messages or notifications to both you and your customers. For instance, it can send reminders before appointments, making sure everyone is on the same page.
Intuitive UI/UX
The software's design and user experience should be easy to understand and navigate. It should be user-friendly so you and your customers can schedule appointments without any confusion.
Website Embedding
If you want prospects to book appointments through your website, the scheduling software should offer an option to embed a booking widget or form. This allows them to book appointments without leaving your site, making it convenient for them.
Efficient Routing Techniques
Look for tools that can smartly distribute leads to your sales team. This ensures that inquiries are handled by the most appropriate person, increasing the chances of closing deals.
For instance, the tool can consider factors like the rep’s skills, experience, availability, or customer preferences to assign meetings to the right sales rep.