Successful Business Meetings
Even the smallest business meetings require proper planning to ensure all of the needs and objectives are met for everyone involved.
Whether you're looking for a location for a casual poolside get-together, or intend to wine and dine a party of 1000 clients and prospects, the earlier you can begin your planning the better.
What Kind of Meeting
Breakfast Meeting
Busy professionals sometimes prefer to get the meeting over and done so they can move on to what they need to accomplish in the day.
Lunch Meeting
A lunch meeting has lots of advantages. It's more social than breakfast. There are more options of locations and cuisine.
Evening Meeting
A lot more time to socialize with your prospects, but unless there is a cultural or religious reason, most guests will expect wine or beer to be served.
What makes you different?
Your business meeting needs to be consistent with your personal and business branding. Analyze your selling style and image. If your sales reps utilize academic white papers to entice the buying decision, your business meeting should be different than the company that delivers a pizza to make the appointment. Be true to yourself when planning the mood of your business meeting.
Create Your Agenda
A good agenda
- informs participants what the meeting is all about by summarizing topics
- tells who is responsible for it
- helps to hold to schedule throughout the meeting
Send Out Meeting Reminders
Life is busy and calendars quickly become booked with scheduled activities. Send out a follow-up meeting reminder two days before your meeting. Those who said they would attend will then be able to confirm they can still make it, or if their plans have changed and you need to reschedule.
Start on Time
Starting on time is really important, both from a logistic and productivity standpoint. If you are the person who typically shows up for meetings on time, then you understand how frustrating it can be when things don't get going as folks trickle into the room. What inevitably happens is, going forward, everyone knows that these meetings never start on time so everyone starts showing up late.
Test Your AV Equipment
Confirm and check the meeting space and set up or test any necessary equipment ahead of time. This step seems like a no-brainer, but sometimes it’s hard to make time for logistical details—and you don’t want to waste any of your carefully planned meeting troubleshooting technology issues. If you’re struggling, ask for help from a colleague who’s used the equipment before (or enlist an IT services representative).