Using Google Calendar with a sales team or for association work

I've seen the light, and it's Google Calendars.

No, I'm not a Google rep, I'm just really happy with my experience that I've had with Google Calendars, because of my sales team and my association, and I thought I'd share it quickly with you guys.  It's a great tool to use if you're looking to improve communication on scheduling with your associates, I can't say enough about it.

I'm in a mother-son sales team, I'm the tech-dork, Mom is the old school broker.  We're a great team b/c I bring a lot of new styles of communication and tech ideas to the table, while Mom has a giant database of former clients, is very well respected in the community, and probably knows more about real estate in Missoula than most agents practicing today.  In almost 9 years working together we've had 1 big problem, scheduling errors and communication.

Mom uses a bound day-planner and her Buffini-systems weekly organizer, I use my Blackberry.  Needless to say, they don't communicate well.  I'd be constantly booking appointments on my phone, and Mom would be writing others down and the next thing we'd know, we'd have all sorts of schedule errors.  I'd tried getting her synced into my Outlook calendar, and tried sending her my Blackberry calendar, but we continually had issues with it.  Then by chance I stumbled across Google Calendar, and it's been great for us, here's why:

- You can set multiple people's schedules to overlap with yours, so in my case I can see Mom's calendar up against mine.  I can also change my preferences to allow her to adjust or set appointments for me, for example if we have a new client meeting, she can add it into my calendar as well.  I give her appointments a different color code than mine, so her appointments show up on my day in red, and mine in blue.

- You can allow others to simply view your calendar as well.  I'm the president-elect of our local association and I've just invited our association staff to be viewable on my calendar.  So now when we have new meetings or events the staff can check my calendar to see my schedule.

- You get a daily email at 5AM with your schedule.  In my case, with Mom's schedule on there as well I get an email with her activities as well.  So when I start the day I can see what both of us have going on.

- It's free, easy to access, and very user-friendly.  You can add as many other people's schedules as you want, so it's great for large teams, and people with multiple association schedules.

If you're having issues with communications, I would strongly recommend you look into Google Calendars, it's been an incredible time saver for the both of us and it's really helped each of us get a grasp on our schedules.