Work Around Calendar Integration
Now let’s talk about annoying calendar situations for just a second. It’s very common for beginners to ask about “integrating my client’s calendar.” This is not something you’ll ever do following the SWAS model. True integration is possible, but will cost you 6-figures and 8 months of iteration and a full time staff member dedicated to managing it continuously. So we avoid this. But how?
There are four options:
1. Open Window Availability -- Work with the client in establishing hours where they will be able to field appointments from your leads. If there's a "dead time" where the business is used to things being rather slow anyway, then this works great! Simply adjust the availability on the HighLevel calendar to those "slow hours", and schedule within that time frame (calendar set up discussed later).
2. Google/Outlook Integration -- If the calendar needing to be integrated is a Google or Outlook Calendar, it can be integrated directly, and that’s usually pretty painless (though it can still pose a challenge to non-tech savvy agencies). Even if the calendar is not Google, but can be integrated with Google, it’s possible to set up a daisy chain where Google connects the dots between your system and the client’s other calendar, like this:
Your System ↔ Google ↔ Client Calendar.
Watch this video to learn more about how to integrate Google.
Watch this video to learn more about how to integrate Outlook.
3. Intermediate Phone Call Method -- Booking a phone call with the front desk/receptionist of the client allows for appointments to be set manually by the business. This still allows for continuity between the conversation initiated from DR/Lead Nurturing, while also leveraging the time of business itself. By booking an intermediate phone appointment, the front desk/admin rep can talk them through the sales process, apply their offer, and then schedule them for an in-person actual appointment using whatever internal booking system they have.
4. The Hot Lead Variant -- This is a different kind of database reactivation. Instead of sending an offer, receiving positive responses, and following up with all the leads yourself in order to book appointments for your client, you’re just going to take all the positive responses and pass them straight off to the business to proactively call the leads themselves and handle them from there. It’s not technically an appointment at all, so be weary of adding more work to your client’s plate. But the advantage is that it’s very easy and incredibly scalable, and can be a very powerful solution for the right client.
**Note: The outlook integration only works for the latest version of the calendar. We’ll work on setting up calendars in HighLevel more in depth later.
**Note: Options that involve getting access to the client's CRM and manually cross-referencing, trying to custom build CRM integrations when you have less than 50 clients, calling the client to check availability, etc., either do not work or lack scalability**