This Allows Your Customers to Book an Estimate Online for FREE

I’m trying to return a call to a prospect, getting the same voicemail recording…

So the customer calls… *ring, ring*, and it goes to my voicemail.

The customer says, “I am trying to schedule an appointment with you, can you please give me a callback.”

I get back to the shop and grab my cell phone, return the call, “Hi Ron here, Ramsden 1-800-painting returning the call, can you please give me a callback,” then later I am not near my phone or I can’t answer it and Mr. customer calls me back.

This could go on and on for days…

Does this sound familiar?

I am Ron Ramsden, I am a DYB Coach, also a painting contractor here in Northern Massachusettes and I’ve found a solution for phone tag!

I want to tell you about a piece of software that we found a while back, this is called “You Can Book Me”.

Here’s a FREE video training on it.

I know some of you are saying, I don’t want to use anything extra, I want to be able to control my own calendar, but I am going to walk through this really quickly with you and tell you all of the benefits of using it.

First of all, you are going to love the cost, the software is FREE.

They do have an advanced feature, I believe it’s $14 or $16 a month, that comes with a few extra bells and whistles, but the free version will work for most companies.

Anyways, “You Can Book Me”, go to youcanbook.me.

This software helps us tremendously, especially because spring market is starting to come, and most of the bookings are being made online.

We do give the customers an option to leave a voicemail and we’ll get back to them.

However, most of my customers go straight to “You Can Book Me”.

You can actually customize the times a customer can book an appointment with you, by blocking out times you are busy.

You can also book how much time you are going to spend with them; you can do it in an hour, all the way up to as many as 4 hours.

I leave within 90 minutes, it doesn’t take me that long to book or actually look at a job and write up an estimate, but if you are presenting the estimate on the spot, you need to try for 2 hours.

Depending on your geography, where you live and how far out the location is.

You don’t have to fill your whole schedule openings for appointments, you create your own schedule.

Maybe you only want appointments in the afternoon, just set your calendar for openings in the afternoon!

As for myself, I have networking events in the mornings and I also schedule some time for one-to-ones on a weekly basis.

Those are automatically blocked off, I also host some mastermind groups, those times are blocked off as well.

You are not going to be able to book on my whole calendar, I only allow bookings on the times that I am free and it’s usually the same times every week, so I don’t have to customize it or change it.

Also, Saturdays and Sundays, I don’t book appointments on Saturdays and Sundays, but maybe you have Saturday mornings as your estimate time, you can free up that portion of your calendar and have it open there.

That’s the customizable part of youcanbook.me

However, not every prospect is a perfect fit for you…

Your time is undeniably valuable, and you don’t want to waste time driving 30 minutes out to an estimate only to figure out that is it just NOT for you.

…so this next part is absolutely vital to implement.

I made something for you and it’s completely FREE.

It’s going to save you an impressive amount of time.

These are my 7 Pre-Qualifying Questions.

With this Pre-Qualifying Process, you’ll drive to only high-value estimates that are right for YOU.

Download it now and use it inside of youcanbook.me.

We’ve also talked about the 3 P’s, which is the Process, the People, and the Profit.

The people are one of the P’s and that is very, very important.

If you don’t know about the 3 P’s, click here to find your target market now.

The questions in youcanbook.me are customizable, of course, you have name, address, phone number, email address.

We have that basic information, we can always use Zillow and see what kind of house you are walking into beforehand.

You might want to see if it is on sale, it has sold, square footage, and things like that.

By doing this you can get yourself warmed up for that estimate before going in there.

One question should be to ask if the home is a rental.

Also, when they will need the property painted.

How did they hear from you?

Always, always, always, ask how they found out about you.

If they have been referred to you, you probably have a leg up on the competition!

How soon do they want the work done?

Also, is this a rush job?

Maybe they found some water damage that needs to be done right away, there is a wedding coming up or something has happened and they need it done asap.

We have extra questions on hand that pertain to that, you can put as many questions as you need.

That’s a great way to Pre-Qualify Your Customers.

Also, block-off time, like I said, if there is a certain time your unavailable, maybe your kid has baseball at 3 pm every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and you want to be there for every game.

You can block that time off and you will never have to worry about it.

As for myself, you cannot book an appointment with me after 2 o’clock on a Friday afternoon, that’s my time to go to the lake.

The next thing you need to do inside of youcanbook.me is set up autoresponder and reminder. After a prospect books an appointment they get a customized email from you, saying something like, “thank you so much for booking online with us, we are looking forward to seeing you at our appointment.”

They know that we have received the booking and they’ve received that email.

You can also customize the time the reminder email goes out to them to remind them the time and day of the appointment.

How many times in the past have you gone to an appointment, you knock on the door and nobody is home, that’s a bummer!

After they’ve booked, I also give them a way to contact me, my email specifically, I don’t hand out my phone number, but they do get my email and we chat on there all the time.

If you’re using this software you can also link to it from FaceBook.

On your Facebook Page, it will show a “Book Now” button, linked straight to your “You Can Book Me” page.

You can also put a link right in your email.

It will save you time instead of going back and forth through email trying to find a day and time that works for both of you.

“What works for you?”, “this Tuesday afternoon?” “No.”

“How about Wednesday?” “No, I’m busy Wednesday.”

How about… they take a look at your calendar and choose a time and day that is right for them.

Simple as pie!

You would be silly NOT to implement this!

On the interface, open times will be in one color and there will be times with lines drawn through them that are already blocked.

This also syncs with your Google calendar, and this is awesome because if you have something already booked on your Google calendar, it would be blocked off as long as you block it off on your Google calendar.

Maybe you are going on a vacation, you just block off the entire week, there is no opening, you are not there, very easy to do.

We will have a customer that will book an appointment, they leave all their information and a lot of times they want it done ASAP.

Customers are also able to change the estimated time, they’re always just so happy that they are able to do these things online.

They get all the information ahead of time, I know every once in a while I have to call them up and say, “I am so sorry that I had something else scheduled, I forgot to put it on my calendar, is there any way we can move that an hour ahead or until the next day?” No one has ever said no.

Anyways, customers love this opportunity and this service that we provide them and I just wanted to share it with you.

If you haven’t gotten your free YouCanBook.Me Training yet, get it now!

I am Ron Ramsden, I am a DYB coach as I said, also a painting contractor up here in Massachusetts, if you need me, you can find me here at ron@dybcoach.com, you can also find me on Facebook, as many of you have.

Send me a message, I’d love to talk to you and answer some of your questions, share some ideas with you, I help painters work on their business so they don’t have to work in the business.

Have a great day and save yourself and your customers some headaches, bye.