Get more sales meetings with this simple email hack

Pop quiz: Which email led to a scheduled meeting on the calendar?


Email 1

From: Bes Tseller

To: Fant Asticlead

Subject line: Re: Introduction

Hi Fant,

Thanks for getting back to me, great to hear you’re exploring solutions in our space. Would love to tell you more about us and see if we can help your team.

Let me know when’s a good time for a call.

Looking forward,

Bes

Email 2

From: Bes Tseller

To: Fant Asticlead

Subject line: Re: Introduction

Hi Fant,

Thanks for getting back to me, great to hear you’re exploring solutions in our space. Would love to tell you more about us and see if we can help your team.

Does Wednesday at 2pm or Thursday at 11am work for you for a call? Let me know and I’ll send an invite.

Looking forward,

Bes

If you answered Email 2, you are right. No, we have not scientifically pitted the two against each other in an A/B test. But we’ve seen Email 2 leading to quicker scheduling numerous times to make us confident it is (almost always) the more effective approach.


Why does it work?

If you gravitated towards Email 1, we get where you’re coming from. Intuitively, you may think that letting someone pick a time most convenient for them will lead to higher response rates thanks to having more options available. It’s also more considerate, and you may (mistakenly) think you’re making it easier for your recipient.

In reality though, there are two factors at play here:

  1. People don’t like too many choices. Toothpaste brands or meeting slots, more than a handful and people start feeling uncomfortable.
  2. People also don’t like to work hard, and for many people, picking a meeting slot out of their entire calendar is hard work. You open your calendar. You start over-optimizing. “Thursday at 11am is open, but I have a meeting right before which might run late… so maybe Friday at 4:30pm, but we might be going out of town so I should probably keep Friday afternoon open? Maybe sometime next week? Yeah, let’s do Tuesday at 2pm three weeks from now. I’ll shoot over a reply once I get back from lunch.”

What you should do

Make things easier for your prospects, or anyone else you’d like to meet soon.

  • Suggest 2-3 options, a mix of several days and morning/afternoon times. Avoid lunch time (unless you’re aiming for an in-person lunch meeting), and very early/late hours (earlier than 9am or later than 5pm).
  • Note times using your recipient’s time zone if it’s not the same as yours, and mark it as such to avoid ambiguity: “How about Tuesday at 2pm EST?”
  • You can indicate you’re open to other time slots, though it will be pretty obvious even if you don’t explicitly state it: “How about Tuesday at 2pm EST or Wednesday at 11am EST? Let me know if these don’t work”
  • You can also indicate the length and format of the meeting: “How about Tuesday at 2pm EST or Wednesday at 11am EST for a 30-minute Zoom video call?”
  • If it’s an in-person meeting, suggest options for a meeting place (preferably convenient for the recipient): “I saw your office is in Soho. Happy to come to your area or meet here around Flatiron” or “Happy to come to your office or to La Colombe across from you.”
  • Finally, saying you’ll be sending a calendar invite is another small step towards making it as easy as possible for your recipient to accept.

To sum it all up:

How about Tuesday at 2pm EST or Wednesday at 11am EST for a 30-minute Zoom video call? Let me know and I’ll send a calendar invite, or if these times don’t work, happy to accommodate another time this week.


When you may want to use Email 1

  • When getting a meeting, ASAP, is not a top priority. Yes, you’d like to meet this person your investor connected you to… you’re definitely replying to the email and trying to make it happen, but you actually wouldn’t mind if the meeting happens next week. Or next month. No rush.
  • When suggesting times would be too pushy. This is obviously quite subjective. My tip? Perhaps counter-intuitively, if the recipient is very senior, it still doesn’t mean it’s pushy to suggest times. On the contrary, more senior usually means busier and happier to get help and be able to make a quicker decision. Pushy may be when it’s the first time you’re interacting with the recipient – for example, when sending out a cold email. In this case, you may want to wait for a reply indicating initial interest before jumping straight to scheduling a (possibly unwanted) meeting.

The bottom line

Next time you’re trying to schedule a meeting over email, try to suggest a few possible time slots. It might accelerate getting the meeting on the calendar.

Netta is the founder and CEO of Blue Seedling. She loves third wave coffee, thin crust pizza, and B2B marketing.

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