Part 3 of Scheduling Meetings: Surge Meetings
I’ve been practicing Surge Meetings for about two years now. I know it doesn’t work for every person or every firm but it works well for me and my family. A huge part of our Surge process is scheduling, and I am aware that my process is a little unique but I have yet to be convinced, from either personal experience or recommendations from others, that other ways are better. At this point, I feel we spend considerably less time scheduling than most firms and our reschedule rates are in line with the average firm. Below is our entire Surge scheduling process, which starts one year before Surge is scheduled to begin.
For this article, we will assume that we are in our Spring 2023 Surge so all dates mentioned will be based off of a Surge that runs March 2023.
Step 1: Prepare your Calendar Software
As we approach Spring 2022 Surge, we must acknowledge that some of these client’s next meetings will be either during the Fall 2022 Surge or the Spring 2023 Surge. So, we must:
Schedule out Fall 2022 Surge & Spring 2023 Surge on our calendars
Prepare the Fall 2022 Planning Session and Spring 2023 Planning Session Calendly Event Types
Create the Meeting Type in Calendly
Create the Workflow for Email Reminders, Videos, etc…
Note that you can largely clone a prior Surge Meeting Type and tweak it slightly. This should not be a large project
Ensure you have specific start times for meetings, such as 8:00a, 9:30a, 11:00a, etc… To keep your day orderly so you don’t have a meeting at 8:15 and then 11:00 so you have dead space.
Step 2: Implement the “Schedule Like a Dentist” Mentality
My firm is me and an Administrative Assistant and all meetings are held via Zoom during Surge. The last item on our agenda for every single Surge Meeting is Schedule Next Planning Session. I will admit we are scheduling meetings either 6 to 12 months into the future so I do have to coach the client a bit to make them all schedule. At this point, after a few years, the clients simply don’t push back at all as they are now used to it. But initially, here are some lines I used to get the client to schedule 6-12 months into the future:
Scenario One
Client: “I have no idea what we are doing next Fall, can we just find a day as the time gets closer?”
Me: “I totally get it, I don’t know what my schedule looks like either! But, it’s super important to me that we don’t fall out of touch and I’ve found in my decade of experience that it is so much easier to reschedule a meeting than it is to get a meeting on the calendar at some point in the future. Is it okay with you if we just pick a date and time that we think will work and then just adjust it as the time comes?”
Scenario Two
Client: “What happens if something comes up in the next few months. Will we not talk about it until then?” [i.e. client is worried they are shut off of communication with you for 6 or 12 months]
Me: “Absolutely not! The whole purpose for putting something on the calendar for [Insert Month] is to make sure that we talk in at least [X] months. If something comes up, we will move that up and handle your needs immediately. My worry is that we fall out of touch because life happens. So, is it okay with you if we put something on the calendar and then we adjust as need be?”
Step 3: Review Surge Meetings v Client List One Month Before Surge Starts
Steps 1 and 2, for our Spring 2023 Surge, were largely handled either in Spring 2022 (Create the Calendly Meetings + schedule clients that only meet once per year) or Fall 2022 (Schedule those that meet every six months). By the time we reach February 2023, we should have at least 90% of our clients scheduled for the Spring 2023 Surge. Some clients may not be scheduled because they are new clients or because of human error and we simply didn’t schedule them at their last meeting. Mistakes happen. But we now must ensure no one is missed and work with those that we need to schedule to get them on the calendar.
Review the Client List with the Surge List (4 Weeks from Start of Surge)
Our CRM, Quivr, allows you to easily export all scheduled meetings in the Meeting Module and your client list filtered by any tags you wish. We simply compare all scheduled meetings with clients that aren’t scheduled to determine who the handful of clients we need to get on the calendar are.
Send “Schedule Meeting” email (3 Weeks from Start of Surge)
We then send a mass email from Quivr to those clients that need to schedule. The email is a templated email in the system and contains a link to the specific Surge Calendly event.
Send “Reminder to Schedule” email (2 Weeks from Start of Surge)
After one week, we send the reminder to schedule email to all clients that have yet to schedule
Call Unscheduled Clients (1 Week from Start of Surge)
After two emails we get on the phone. Remember – we will still enter the selected meeting time through Calendly using the specific Surge Meeting type so all meetings still follow the exact same process.
Next week we will cover how we handle one-off meetings and reschedules.
Until next week,
Steve
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What’s Quivr?
I’ve received quite a few questions about Quivr since launching this blog. As promised in the first few posts, I strive to make this content applicable and valuable to all readers regardless of your tech stack. But Quivr is a real thing and a real community. Our mission is to be the CRM built for the small but mighty financial planner that does real financial planning. Below are a few key features and how to learn more if you desire.
Access to the Quivr Community where we discuss all things operations and host weekly Office Hours to assist with implementing efficiencies in your practice. I’m an open book about my practice and so are the other community members. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Workflow Engine to create multi-person, multi-role processes natively in your CRM prepackaged with 30+ workflows that my firm uses
Task Template builder to create simple, repeatable tasks in an instant prepackaged with 25+ prepacked Task Templates that my firm uses
35+ client-friendly, compliance-approved reports summarizing specific financial planning data
Meeting Module that decreases meeting prep to five minutes
Store, retrieve, and report on all financial planning data
