So You’ve Booked Too Many Clients: Here’s What to Do
We think congratulations are in order! Since you’ve come to this blog post, that must mean you’re doing something right with your marketing, so we’re proud of you for getting to the point where you’re now officially overbooked. Although it’s stressful, this is a stage in your business that can open so many doors and opportunities that you’ve probably only been dreaming about until now!
First, though, we need to deal with the overwhelm and figure out how you can free up space on your calendar so that you can give your undivided attention to your clients, plus what to do with new leads. Keep reading as we cover all of these things and more in this blog post!
Dealing with New Leads When You’re Overbooked
How the heck do you deal with new leads when you have zero availability to take them on? Do you just tell them “Sorry, I can’t” and send them on their merry way? There are few different ways you can turn new leads away if you just aren’t able to sign another client.
PROVIDE RESOURCES THAT WILL HELP
Every exchange with a potential client should provide them value in some way, even if you’re turning down their business. Although you aren’t able to serve them, you can still help them by pointing them in the direction of resources that they’ll find useful as they relate to their problem.
Perhaps you have some sort of free guide you could send them, blog posts, or a free training that will get them started in the right direction without your personal help. Providing them something of value is not only just plain best practice, but it shows that you care about their problem, still want to help, and will leave a great impression. That way, if you follow back up with them when you’re available, it’s more likely that they’ll work with you if their problem still isn’t solved by then.
POINT THEM TO SOMEONE IN YOUR NETWORK
Your network and business relationships are just as important as your client relationships. You know the term “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”? This is basically what it’s all about. In order for a business relationship to grow and prosper, it has to be mutually beneficial. So, a great way to benefit someone else is by referring potential clients to that person (or people)!
Providing resources is one thing, but when you point them to someone that offers similar services that could take care of their problem, that’s essentially even more helpful. (After all, they came to you because they either don’t want to or don’t know how to fix the problem themselves.)
SEND THEM TO A WAITLIST
We’d recommend using this in tandem with either providing resources or referring to someone else (or even better, all three!). As soon as you’re overbooked, it’s a wonderful idea to have a waitlist that you can send new leads to. They’ll enter their information, and you’ll have that in a database of warm leads to pull from when you have an opening back up in your calendar.
It wouldn’t be in our nature if we didn’t suggest a Dubsado lead capture form for your waitlist! If you have a website, you can add the form there. If they reach out via email or DMs, you can send them the public link to fill it out. Be sure if you add to your website, that you do so ASAP once your calendar is booked up. This’ll just help you prevent extra conversations when you have to reach out and explain that you’re unavailable.
To put a twist on this, you could have two separate workflows in Dubsado for your lead capture form that you switch out manually– one that sends your usual inquiry emails when you’re available, and one that sends an email explaining you aren’t available with resources/referrals.
Making Room in Your Calendar for More Clients
If you know anything about us, you probably know what we’re about to say: It’s time to scale, baby! Hopefully, an overbooked calendar means you’re financially ready to start finding and interviewing potential subcontractors or employees to help take the load off (and if not, it’s definitely time to seriously consider a price increase). By doing so, not only are you going to feel like a thousand-pound weight has been lifted off your shoulders, but it also means that you’ll be able to exponentially increase the amount of clients you take on, therefore increasing your revenue!
If the thought of hiring absolutely scares the shiz out of you, don’t worry. We’ve done our fair, fair share of hiring, firing, and everything in between. We go over our hiring process in this podcast episode.
BUT FIRST, AUTOMATE
While you’re analyzing your processes to look for tasks that you can delegate, see if there are more things you could automate. Doing so will put you a big step ahead of freeing up calendar space before you even hire. You should have your onboarding process automated to where all you have to do is edit a few canned emails, you can have tasks automatically added to your project management tool, schedule social posts, even down to the smallest detail of creating keyboard shortcuts that prevent you from having to type out the same thing a million times.
Check out this list of 17 things you can automate to save you time, energy, and money.
Now that you know how to deal with new leads when you’re overbooked, plus how to free up space in your calendar to take on more, you’re ready to get back to solving important problems for your clients with less stress on your plate!
Although it isn’t fun to be overbooked (hello, headache), it shows that your marketing tactics thus far have been working wonderfully, so you should definitely keep at it. Great job, and good luck!
