Have you ever been in a business meeting where it went way too long or much shorter than you initially anticipated? Or have you ever felt like you don’t exactly know what steps to follow up with after the meeting?
We have all grounds covered to help you achieve a significantly more valuable meeting in any business encounters.
We will begin with talking about the different tips you can use to have the ultimate valuable and time-efficient meeting.
Let’s start with what you want to discuss in a meeting.
Is it worth dragging people into a meeting room to clarify or discuss something or can it be done in an email instead?
More often than not, shorter meeting can be summarized in an email, a phone call or even a text message if the recipient is your colleague.
Corporations and big organizations try to set weekly meetings for ongoing projects to have members from different departments discuss what they have done, what they have pending and what they will do in the future. Once the project has been kicked off, if need be, they will shift the meeting to a bi-weekly event and they will reduce the participants regarding the project.
Have an Agenda:
Aside from what we mentioned, as the leader of a business meeting, you have to have an timeline of where a project is, what is done and what is expecting, from whom, as well as having a proper list to go through to avoid an unprofessionally conducted meeting.
Your meeting should start on a high note and you should quickly follow up with you agenda or list to make sure everyone is on board and up-to-date with their tasks.
This list will be a guideline you can share after your meetings to have the participants know what was discussed and what they will need to provide in the next meeting.
Furthermore, if you couldn’t attend the meeting yourself, anyone else can take charge going by your list and updating it for the upcoming meetings.
The next important factor is deciding in what way to conduct a meeting.
One important factor is when you have team members, business associates or clients who are overseas. The difficulty comes in when you have to decide starting from a simple email or a phone-call, to a Skype for business meeting or actually making the trip to attend your business meeting.
1) If the matter in hand is just a question, an email will be more than sufficient to get your answer. More often than not, sending an email is actually the most responsible thing to do because if you continue to set face-to-face business meetings for small purposes, it comes across as disrespectful to your business associate’s time.
2) If you need more clarification on a certain manner, a scheduled phone call will most probably solve the issue at hand. Then again, it’s important how you conduct a phone-call meeting. If it’s one your colleagues or someone in your team, it may be acceptable to call them within working hours, but if the recipient is your business associate or your client, it will be much more professional if you book a time with them to make sure they will be available. Specifically if you’re making a call to an overseas person, you have to make sure the timing won’t be odd for them.
3) If the meeting needs to have many participants or responsible people attending, a Skype for business call will be a practical way to set the meeting. When a project is being kicked off and you have to have many people updating the team on their tasks depending on their department, it’s easier to have a Skype call to make sure everyone can have easy access and ability to attend the meeting. There usually needs to be a conductor or a leader for these meetings to guide the meeting step by step.
4) If your meeting with an important client or have an important business meeting, it will be more appropriate to have a face-to-face meeting. At times, travel may have to be involved for overseas parties, but in most cases, it’s definitely worth it to make the trip if it will mean better business profits in the long-run or a better business relationship with an important client.
Overall, it’s very important to make sure you can have a protocol for you business to follow. This protocol will be a guideline for all the different position within your organization and will establish better trust and more respect among colleagues as well as with outside business partners.
Now that we have discussed the tips into how to conduct a valuable meeting, let’s talk about what tricks you can use as a company to win over a business meeting.
Trick number 1:
To ensure a memorable business meetings, try to way your options about the place the meeting is taking place.
If you can take your foreign client to a fancy local restaurant or your business partner to a nice lounge, it will definitely change the mood of the whole meeting. Your business associate will recognize as someone who personally cares about the business and cares to develop a relationship further to only a business encounter.
Trick number 2:
Try to remember the details of what you have already discussed with that person previously.
Are they a fan of a certain football club? Did their family enjoy their holidays in Europe? Are they a fan Elon Musk? Or Warren Buffet? You can use this information and learn more about it so the next time you meet your can talk about Warren Buffet’s new book or share a story about when you travelled to Europe. Not only you will be able to strengthen your bond to a personal level, you will be able to show them that you care about what they say and you take note.
We hope you have benefited from this article on tips and tricks on how to add value to business meetings.
