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How To Make Business Meetings More Efficient
| Guest post by: Sarah MacGregor |
Article Overview: It can be easy to get caught up in an enjoyable conversation with a client or team member, but you as a small business owner need to learn to keep your business meetings on track. Learn some simple tips to help steer your meetings in a way that will increase business efficiency for both you and your clients.
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How To Make Business Meetings More Efficient
Have you ever heard of the book called Death By Meeting? When I first saw it I thought the cover picture was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen – a man sitting at a boardroom table with his head and hands flat down on the table as if he’d just keeled over!
Back in my corporate days as a software developer when I saw this book I immediately knew exactly what it was talking about, and I was almost to that point myself to be honest. The message that it was talking about is still relevant in the virtual world of today - if you let your small business meetings get off track you may indeed be afflicted with the dreaded Death By Meeting!
Let me explain in more detail: it can be easy to get caught up in an enjoyable conversation with a client or team member – you start with the weather which leads to what you did last weekend, which leads to etc. etc. But remember that they as a client are not paying for your wit and charm (although that can be an added bonus!), so try to keep the meeting on track or you may find you are spending way too much of your valuable time in meetings continually trying to reach some elusive resolution over and over and over...
Using myself as an example as a Virtual Assistant, it’s my job to try to help my clients and steering them along during a meeting to keep it on track is one of those things that I should be doing, as well as keeping the chit chat to a minimum. Believe me, the chatting can come from either one of us!
On the other hand, if you and your client have a relationship that enjoys a bit of chatting then by all means, go for it – but make sure that the clock is turned off. Better yet, why not keep the chatting to the end of meeting? Then you’re not flipping your time clock on and off!
When we’re talking to our clients we should be asking them helpful questions to get the info that we need in order to get the job started, and finished for that matter. I find that a great way to increase business efficiency for both myself and my clients is to schedule weekly check-ins to make sure that all the tasks are covered and questions answered. As long as I keep this check in to a half an hour max, everyone is good to go, and neither one of us is spending too much time talking instead of actually working.
Keeping your small business meetings on track means you’ll have more time to spend actually doing the work instead of just talking about it!
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About the Author: Sarah MacGregor RSS for Sarah's articles - Visit Sarah's website It wasn't long before I realized that some things that seemed like common sense to me were in fact a real struggle for other business owners, and so I naturally fell into the role of breaking down projects into manageable pieces, coaching business owners on how to become more efficient, and bascially coming to the rescue of every solopreneur that crosses my path! I love it when my geekiness perfectly compliments a client's business gaps. I used to be (and still am) a coding geek - are you a geek too? Let's chat! Love cats? Me too! I will ooh and aah about cats any chance I get. Like to dance? Teach dance? Watch dance of all kinds? Bring it on! I've tried so many different kinds of dance and a few have become my lifelong passions. To learn how I can help your business with my Efficient Virtual Assistant Super Powers, and to sign up for my newsletter and free Super Efficiency E-books, visit my site at http://www.ToTheRescue.ca Click here to visit Sarah's website   Super Efficient Email Mgmt |
Related Forum Posts
LEADERS
- L- Loyal
E- Eager to learn and serve
A- Active
D- Delegate
E- Efficient
R- Reliable
S- Smart
Top 19 Copywriting books
- 1. Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy. Wiley.
2. Positioning: The Battle for your Mind. Al Ries and Jack Trout. Warner.
3. The New Positioning. Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill.
4. Tested Advertising Methods. John Caples. Prentice-Hall.
5. How to Make your Advertising Make Money. John Caples. Prentice-Hall.
6. Guerrilla Advertising. Jay Conrad Levinson. Houghton Mifflin.
7. Direct Mail Copy that Sells. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall.
8. Sales Letters that Sizzle. Herschell Gordon Lewis. NTC Business Books.
9. Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall.
10. Romancing the Brand. David Martin. American Management Association.
11. The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, George Gribbin, David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves. NTC Business Books.
12. Confessions of an Advertising Man. David Ogilvy. NTC Business Books.
13. My Life in Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books.
14. Scientific Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books.
15. How to Become an Advertising Man. James Webb Young. NTC Business Books.
16. The Lasker Story as He Told It. NTC Business Books.
17. Advertising Concept and Copy. George Felton. Prentice Hall.
18. The Copy WorkShop Workbook. Bruce Bendinger. The Copy Workshop.
19. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads. Luke Sullivan. Wiley.
This should keep you busy for at least a year.
Enjoy!
Partner with them
- Welcome to the Group TMR,
Some ideas of people you can partner with for the Custom Napkins:
- Wedding Planners
- Photographers
- Annual General Meetings for Corporations
- Pageants
- Hotels
- Elite Restaurants
- Elite Spas
My entry
- 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read
- this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody.
2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto.
3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book
Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Quote of the Day - "The only people witho
- Thanks for sharing this Evan, there are some very powerful quotes in there, I particularly like this one:-
You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully.
regards,
Mal.
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