Appointment Setting Skills Overview - Skill 1: Agenda (Part 4: Timezone Boundaries)

Introduction

We will be covering timezone boundaries. An appointment setter can work around the time zones of their current leads in the following ways:

Communicating Timezone Boundaries with the Team

An appointment setter needs to find out what times that the lead is willing to attend meetings, so that you don’t end up clashing with their schedule and/or work hours.

According to Nataly Kelly, who is the Vice President of Localisation at HubSpot, “If you’re clear about why you can’t work every hour of the day across all timezones, teammates will understand that. Just make sure you propose alternatives.”

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Get Specific When Talking About Dates and Times with Leads

An appointment setter needs to specify which timezone the deadline or meeting is scheduled under, otherwise they or the lead may do something at the wrong time;

• BST timezone, which is one hour later than GMT and runs between late March to late October
• GMT timezone, which is the default time in Britain and is used to calculate the time across the rest of the world
• EST timezone, which is the default time on the eastern coast of the United States and Canada
• PST timezone, which is one of the default times used in North America, and is eight hours behind GMT

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Be Mindful of Lead’s Work Hours

An appointment setter needs to respect their lead’s work hours or timezone boundaries. They can do this by working out how urgent a task is before sending it over to them, and developing a schedule which works around everybody’s work hours.

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Test Out Split Shifts or Days that Cater to Different Timezones

A split shift is a shift that is split between two periods in a day for longer than a half-hour or hour lunch break, for example 9am to 1pm and 4pm to 8pm.

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Embrace Virtual Processes and Project Management Tools

A business does not need to work in the same location or at the same time anymore.

There is the following project management software:

1. Kissflow Project
2. Trello
3. Asana
4. Zoho Projects
5. Write
6. com
7. ProofHub
8. Clarizen
9. Airtable
10. Kanban Tool
11. Zenkit
12. MeisterTask
13. ClickUp
14. Paymo
15. Teamwork

The following is essential in project management software:

1. Kanban board, which helps with;
   1. visualising the workflow, displaying everything in an easy to understand way
   2. limiting works in progress, meaning that an appointment setter is not being overloaded with work
   3. managing workflows, assigning tasks to particular team members
   4. implementing explicit policies, setting up steps for how work goes from one step to another
   5. allowing room for feedback, allowing people to point out flaws or provide suggestions
2. Task Management
3. To-Do Lists
4. Time Tracker
5. Collaboration
6. Integration
7. Detailed Reporting

There is the following task management software:

1. Kissflow Project
2. Podio
3. HiTask
4. MeisterTask
5. Proofhub
6. Workfront
7. TaskQue
8. Asana
9. Trello
10. Zoho Projects

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Conclusion

We have covered timezone boundaries. Timezone boundaries include communicating timezone boundaries with the team, getting specific when talking about dates and times with leads, being mindful of lead’s work hours, testing out split shifts or days that cater to different timezones, and embracing virtual processes and project management tools.