Tips to Make Your Next Meeting More Successful.
Whether online or face-to-face, inefficient and unproductive meetings may be the single biggest time waster in business today. The key to saving time and money is often in holding conferences that provide the same result but remove the time and cost of traveling to attend face-to-face meetings.
Encounter provides easy-to-use, competitively priced alternatives to face-to-face meetings. We know you can't replace all in-person meetings -- so we have, instead, listed the biggest timesaving tips for both successful online and in-person meetings.
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Have a purpose. What do you want to accomplish? Always have specific, clear goals and objectives whenever you organize a meeting. Have a plan of action, brainstorm a long-standing problem, educate or inform. Encounter helps you prepare your meeting BEFORE the conference call so that all the participants will be clear on the purpose of it and it won't become a big waste of time. |
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Create an agenda. This comes under the heading of preparation. If you lack in thoughtful planning, any endeavor will probably fail, including meetings. Using your Encounter meeting page, you can create an agenda listing the topics you need to cover and a time parameter for each. Your web page allows you to post the agenda for all your participants to view before the conference call takes place. |
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Stay focused and follow your agenda. When a leader controls the direction of the meeting and keeps everyone focused on the agenda, time is well spent. Because all participants see the Encounter meeting page, the agenda is always in view, allowing the meeting to stay focused. |
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Have appropriate documents available. Many times, showing visuals or specific data is the only way to communicate a point more effectively, especially when web conferencing. Be sure you have those documents posted on the Encounter meeting page before the meeting, in order for your participants to review them prior to the call. |
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Create a 'parking lot' for other issues. Some issues, while not appropriate to your specific meeting, are important. When they come up, take note by creating a message on your Encounter meeting page so you can handle them later. |
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Be prompt. Start your meetings at exactly the time you set them, not delaying for even five minutes. To make those who arrive on time wait for those who are late is discourteous and unfair whether you meet in person or virtually. When you are punctual consistently, people will arrive to your meetings on time more often. |
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Have a meeting timeframe. Meetings with a time limit create a sense of urgency and importance. Participants will generally react by concentrating on the agenda topics and avoiding chatter. The time limit encourages attendees to be more efficient and effective, especially towards the end of the meeting. |
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Schedule meetings smartly. If you schedule too early in the morning, you risk lateness due to traffic. Too close to lunch and they're thinking of food. Too close to the end of day and they're thinking of going home. Find that right time, normally in mid-morning/afternoons. |
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Schedule your next meeting. At the end of any meeting, it's best to schedule the follow up meeting. For face-to-face meetings, it's easiest to do this while all attendees are together. With Encounter, simply request a meeting online and invitations will automatically be sent to the participants you designate, giving them the date, time and access information in an email.
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