Calendly CRM integration: Powering high performing sales teams

Calendly CRM integration: Powering high performing sales teams

Sales is a fast-paced game. To sell effectively, you need to spend your time on activities that drive value.

One common time-sucker is the constant back-and-forth emails needed to schedule a single meeting. This is not an activity that drives value: so, it’s time to remove it from your plate.

That's where scheduling tools like Calendly come in: Close’s Calendly CRM integration lets sales reps focus on what really matters - closing deals!

Calendly makes it easy to schedule meetings with prospects and clients by enabling them to select the time on your calendar that works best for them. It automates what used to be a very manual and painstaking process and can save sales reps a lot of time.

But it gets better: using a Calendly CRM combo ensures that all of that vital meeting information is automatically tracked in your CRM, meaning important information never gets lost and your prospects don’t fall through the cracks in the follow-up.

At Close, we use Calendly to schedule almost all meetings because it saves time and creates a better experience for customers, which should always be the goal.

So, why should you connect your CRM to Calendly? And how can this help you in your day-to-day processes?

Let’s find out.

Why connect your CRM to Calendly

We use Calendly to schedule two different types of meetings at Close:

  1. Internal meetings between teammates
  2. External meetings with prospects, customers and partners

I’ll focus on the second use case in this post and cover some of the different ways you can create a Calendly CRM integration to make the most out of these meetings.

As a sales rep, you work hard to get potential customers to agree to meet with you. With a Calendly CRM integration, you can prepare for, execute, and follow up with your Calendly meetings to make the most out of them.


If you’re not already using Calendly or another scheduling tool in your sales process, you’re wasting precious time.

Calendly users save 4 hours per week on average. Calendly CRM power users save even more time.

More time freed up from manual tasks = more time selling!

Connecting our CRM and Calendly

If your calendar is already connected to Close (which it should be!), then the meetings created by Calendly that get added to your Calendar will automatically be synced in Close, as long as the person that booked the event already exists as a Contact in Close.

In some instances though, you might want every person who books a meeting via Calendly to be added to your CRM. You might also want to run more advanced automations within your CRM based on Calendly invites. That’s where the Calendly CRM integration via Zapier comes into play.

Zapier is the internet’s most popular choice for connecting apps. There are thousands of different apps you can connect, including Calendly and Close.

Close’s Calendly CRM integration is powered by Zapier, so to get started with this guide, you’ll need to create a Zapier account and select Close + Calendly as the apps you’d like to connect.

One thing to note - if you’re trying to set up a zap for a team, you'll need to make sure you’re an admin in your team's Calendly. If not, Zapier can only pull in your own events and not your teammates.

The first step of every Zapier automation involves choosing an app and a trigger. For most of this guide, triggers are app events that take place in Calendly, which notify Zapier to run a certain action in Close. Calendly currently has two Triggers to choose from:

  1. Invitee Created - when someone scheduled an event using Calendly
  2. Invitee Canceled - when someone cancels an event via Calendly

The next step is selecting a second application where an action will be performed. For this guide, you’ll be using Close as the second app and choosing an “Action Event” to perform.

There are currently 78 different ways that you can connect Calendly + Close. In the rest of this post, I’ll cover some of the most popular and powerful ways to connect our CRM and Calendly.

Potential Calendly CRM use cases

Create a Lead/Contact when a Calendly meeting is booked

If your Calendly link is publicly available, you might want to create a new Lead or Contact in the CRM whenever a new meeting is booked. That way, you’ll save new leads and contacts to your CRM whenever they book a meeting with you using Calendly.

In Zapier, create a new zap, select Calendly as the first app, and “Invitee Created” as the trigger event. Connect your Calendly account, run a test, and continue to the second step of the zap.

Next, select Close as the app you want to connect and select “Find Lead” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. After connecting your Close account, you have a few options for how you’ll search for the Lead in Close.

If “Company Name” is one of the required questions on your Calendly form, you can use that field to search for the Lead in Close. If not, use “Email” as the field to search for and select “Invitee Email” in that dropdown. If you’re using an email address to search for the lead, select “Exact Match” in the “Exact Or Partial Match?” dropdown.

Click the checkbox next to “Create Close Lead if it doesn’t exist yet?”. Input all of the relevant info you have about your new lead from Calendly into the appropriate fields. At the very least, you should input “Invitee Name” under the “Contact Name” field and “Invitee Email” under the “Contact Office Email” field.

Now, every time a new lead books a meeting with you, they’ll automatically be saved as a lead or contact in your CRM.

Pro Tip: In some cases you may only want the event invitee added as Lead to Close if they meet certain criteria. Use a Filter step by Zapier to achieve this.

Create a task when a Calendly meeting is booked

If you’d like your Close users to perform a certain task before or after a Calendly event, you can automatically create a Task for them in Close when that meeting is first booked in Calendly. This could be useful if certain custom information needs to be sent to a meeting invitee or if you want to create reminders to follow up after the Calendly meeting.

In Zapier, create a new zap, select Calendly as the first app and “Invitee Created” as the trigger event. Connect your Calendly account, run a test, and continue to the second step of the zap.

Next, select Close as the app you want to connect and select “Find User” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Under the “Customize User” tab, select “Event Extended Assigned To Email” under the email field.

In the next step, select Close as the app to connect and select “Find Lead” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Connect your Close account and select “Invitee Email” under the “Email” field. Select the “Create Close Lead if it doesn't exist yet?” checkbox. In the field below, input the relevant invitee information that you captured from Calendly.

Select Close in the next step of the zap and choose “Create Task” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. In the “Customize Task” tab, go to the “Assigned To” field, select “Custom” and “ID” under the step 2 tab. Under the “Lead” field select “ID” under the step 3 tab. Input a due date and text under the respective fields.

Now, the right rep will be reminded to send important information before the meeting or to follow up once the meeting is done.

Add a note when a Calendly meeting is canceled

If a meeting gets canceled, you might want to add a Note to the Lead and also include a record of the cancellation reason that is stored in Calendly.

In Zapier, create a new zap, select Calendly as the first app, and “Invitee Canceled” as the trigger event. Connect your Calendly account, run a test, and continue to the second step of the zap.

Next, select Close as the app you want to connect and select “Find Lead” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. After connecting your Close account, you have a few options for how you’ll search for the Lead in Close.

You can use “Email” as the field to search for by selecting “Invitee Email” in that dropdown. Select “Exact Match” in the “Exact Or Partial Match?” dropdown.

Next to ”Create Close Lead if it doesn’t exist yet?”, click the checkbox. Enter all information you have about the lead from Calendly into the following fields. Make sure to at least input “Invitee Name” under the “Contact Name” field and “Invitee Email” under the “Contact Office Email” field.

Select Close as the next step in the Zap and select “Create Note” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Under the “Customize Note” tab, select the “Lead” field, click “Custom”, and select “ID” from step 2 of the zap.

Here is some sample text you might want to include in the Note:

Calendly scheduled for 1. Event Start Time Pretty was canceled.

Event cancellation reason: 1. Event Cancel Reason

Send an email when a Calendly meeting is canceled

When a Calendly meeting is canceled, you might want to automatically email the prospect or customer to reschedule. This automation handles that for you and ensures that your team always follows up on canceled meetings.

Select Calendly in Zapier and “Invitee Canceled” as the trigger event. Next, select Close in the second step of the zap and choose “Find Lead” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown.

Use “Email” as the field to search for and select “Invitee Email” in that dropdown. Select “Exact Match” in the “Exact Or Partial Match?” dropdown.

Click the checkbox next to ”Create Close Lead if it doesn’t exist yet?” Input all of the relevant details you have about that lead from Calendly into the appropriate fields. You should at least use “Invitee Name” under the “Contact Name” field and “Invitee Email” under the “Contact Office Email” field.

Select Close as the next step in the Zap and select “Create Email ” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Under “Contact”, select “Custom” and then “Invitee Email” from step 1. Select “Outbox” from the “Status” dropdown. Under the “To” dropdown, select “Invitee Email” from step 1.

You now have a choice of writing the email within Zapier or selecting an email template from Close. Choose one option and use the email to try and reschedule the meeting. Here’s an example of an email you might want to send.


Subject:

Rescheduling the meeting you canceled

Body Text:

Hi 1. Invitee First Name,

I noticed that you just canceled the meeting that we had scheduled. If you’d like to reschedule it you can do so using this link:

[INSERT CALENDLY MEETING LINK HERE]

Thanks!
1. Event Assigned To


Under “Email Account ID”, select “Custom” and “Event Extended Assigned to Email” from the first step.

Pro Tip: If you’d like this email to come across as being sent manually instead of automated, use the “Delay by Zapier” app before the email step described above and set a delay of 10 minutes.

Create a Smart View of past Calendly meetings

Close’s Smart Views can be a helpful way to make sure that you’re always following up on your Calendly meetings.

If your meetings are automatically synced to your Close account, you can create a Smart View of past Calendly meetings by inputting the following query into the search bar:

meeting(status:completed meeting_note:"Powered by Calendly.com") last_completed_meeting_starts_at < "7 days ago"

This search query looks for completed meetings from the past 7 days that include the text “Powered by Calendly.com” in the calendar invitation.

Important note: Most Calendly meeting invites contain the “Powered by Calendly” text by default, but if yours doesn’t, you’ll need to go to your Calendly event settings and include this phrase or a different unique text phrase in the event’s calendar description. That way, you can differentiate regular meetings from Calendly-specific meetings.

Alternatively, you can use the Calendly event name as a search filter if you want to get more granular about the different types of Calendly meetings that can occur. In this case, you could use a search like this: meeting(status:completed note:"[YOUR CALENDLY EVENT NAME]" starts_at:"last week" )

Calendly CRM combo: The ultimate time saver

The Close Calendly CRM integration ensures that sales meetings are recorded properly and that follow-ups always take place at the right time.

There are a lot of different ways to integrate your CRM to Calendly, but with a few of the options outlined above, you can rest assured that you’re squeezing every bit of opportunity out of your meetings.

To get started with syncing your Calendly meetings into a CRM and automating follow-ups, start your free 14 day trial of Close!

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