| Dec 1, 2020 | | 5 min read

Give Your Clients the Gift of Great Meeting Software

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COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the small business economy. Many businesses were devastated, some were lost, and those that survived did so by becoming ecommerce enabled.

It’s not over yet and few businesses are operating at pre-COVID levels. They need all of the help they can get to improve operational efficiencies and maintain profitability. 

One of the most critical tools for SMBs right now is meeting software. With in-person sales/supplier meetings almost completely eliminated, small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) must find ways to facilitate virtual events and collaboration. If you are an agency that serves SMBs, then there is a massive opportunity in providing your clients with this essential technology. 

This article explores how you can do it—today. 

Get started by creating a free account on the Vendasta platform! 

Why Meeting Software for SMBs

Meeting software is not an option for SMBs. They need to be able to organize and manage their calendars online—and do it with ease. Here’s why.

1. Time Savings

Manually managing a busy calendar can be stressful and tedious work. Some software assistance is needed to help track and organize constant back-and-forth emails, phone calls, voicemails, hand-written notes, calendar invitations, manual reminder messages, etc.

All of this manual toil amounts to between two and three hours of work per day for most small businesses. Online appointment schedulers virtually eliminate this lost time by enabling these businesses to book and manage all of their appointments through a consolidated online portal. That’s a total of between 10 to 15 hours per week that can be recovered and devoted to more important administrative, operational, finance, accounting, sales, and marketing tasks.

2. Increased Efficacy

Virtual meetings are great, but there’s another obstacle… attendance. The average no-show rate of virtual meetings and events is 35 percent. Your clients are busy and can’t afford the lost-time, rescheduling hassle, and frustrations that come with missed meetings.

Fortunately, most meeting software comes equipped with a critical tool in driving appointment attendance: automated reminders. In fact, studies show that automated appointment reminders can help to reduce meeting no-show rates by up to 80 percent—which is more than enough to offset the average no-show rate.

3. The New Normal

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to rethink how they operate and accelerated the need for digital commerce in local markets. Flower shops that may not have operated on a phone-in basis before must now have ecommerce enabled websites to stay in business. Where calls and consultations once happened in-person, they are now predominantly occurring online. 

Though some COVID-driven changes will be temporary, many are here to stay.

As it’s estimated that 25 percent to 30 percent of the workforce will be working from home by the end of 2021, working remotely isn’t a trend, it’s the way forward. And it’s tools that help people save time while working remotely, such as meeting schedulers, that will be essential for continued success.

Adam Tomporowski

Product Marketing Manager, Vendasta

By reselling meeting software and enabling your clients to schedule and manage their meetings online, you can give them more time back in their workweeks, improve the efficacy and efficiency of their meetings, and ensure that they have a critical asset for conducting commerce online.

How to Provide SMBs with Meeting Software

Now that you understand why your clients need meeting software, let’s explore exactly how you can become that provider.

The answer is by partnering with a white-label software company. These companies develop and distribute software for the purpose of resale through marketing agencies, media companies, and other B2B entities that serve other businesses.

Here’s how it works.

What is White-Label Software?

White-label software can be defined as any third-party solutions that can be rebranded and resold by other B2B companies through their existing distribution networks.

It looks like this in action:

For example, Vendasta is a white-label software company that develops a suite of marketing solutions for local businesses. However, Vendasta does not sell directly to small businesses. Instead, they partner with marketing agencies around the world who then place their branding on these solutions and resell them to the local business networks that they already serve.

Why White-Label Software?

Some of the strategic benefits of becoming a marketing software reseller include:

  • Skip the research and development. Building your own software solutions requires substantial engineering resources that most agencies and media companies do not have at their avail.
  • Instant go-to-market (GTM). With most new product and service offerings, substantial time must be dedicated to building a GTM strategy. White-label solutions, however, generally come with all of the resources needed to kickstart your GTM campaign today.
  • Increase market appeal. By offering a comprehensive and complete suite of solutions, agencies and media companies have a leg up over other competitors in their market. 
  • Scalable revenue growth. With white-label products, agencies and media companies only pay for the products they sell. That means that there is virtually no risk in offering white-labeled solutions.
  • Client retention. The more needs you can address for your clients, the stronger your relationship becomes, and the less likely it is that those clients will switch to another provider. Therefore, white-label solutions are a great way to instantly diversify your client-facing portfolio and increase the lifetime value of your client base.

Meeting Scheduler in Vendasta’s White-Label Business App

Meeting Scheduler is Vendasta’s proprietary appointment software. Like all owned and operated Vendasta assets, the Meeting Scheduler is a white-label application that’s designed to be rebranded and resold by agencies and other B2B companies that support small businesses.

Meeting Scheduler is built into Vendasta’s award-winning Sales and Success Center so that our agency and media partners can use this powerful software themselves to help organize and schedule their own appointments. 

But that’s not all. The powerful Meeting Scheduler is now available in Vendasta’s Business App, an SMB facing portal that agencies and Vendasta resellers can use to provide their clients with automated performance reports, access to a marketplace full of products for sale, and now, the ability to schedule and manage appointments—all in one place. And did we mention that you can provide your SMB clients with this invaluable software for free?

Click the link, below, to create your free account and explore Vendasta’s robust white-label platform, CRM, Marketplace, and Business App.

About the Author

Brock is a Former Marketing Analyst at Vendasta with a passion for the more creative things in life. He also answers to Archie - for obvious reasons... And when he's not putting his fingers in paint, or saving Riverdale, he can usually be found asking Google one of the many more embarrassing "how to" questions.

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