Confirm your Appointments

Outlook has a very convenient feature that many agents are ignoring when they use the calendar to record an appointment. This procedure will send the person, with whom you are meeting, an e-mail message with the date, time and subject of the meeting that, if they choose, can be saved to their calendar.

Another benefit of using this method to confirm appointments is that if you make a change on your calendar of the appointment, it will automatically ask you if you want to notify the person(s) that have already been invited.

Let’s go through an example and point out a few things that you can do.

1. Open the appointment.
2. Click Invite Attendees.
3. Enter a name or names in the To box.
4. Enter the location in the Location box such as office, client’s home, etc.
5. Select any additional options you want.
6. Click Send.

Step 3 in the diagram above, suggests that you put a 1-day reminder on the appointment. The reminder will pop-up for you to call the person to whom you have the appointment and confirm it. It is not a lot different from your doctor’s office calling you the day before an appointment. This reminder is especially effective if the appointment is made days to weeks prior.

If your customer is not using Outlook, they will still receive the e-mail telling them about the appointment; they just won’t be able to save it to their calendar.

Using this procedure for confirming appointments will lead to less misunderstandings and protect one of your most valuable assets: your time.

If you are impressed with this idea and would like more strategies to improve the effectiveness of your business, attend a CRS approved 1-unit Marketing with Microsoft Office class.

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