Effective Meetings - Part 1

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Have you ever attended a meeting, and 2 minutes into it, you are still struggling to understand the topic of discussion?

After introductions and a few conversation starters, many people struggle to conduct effective business meetings with an understood agenda, clear next steps and outlined outcomes. We tend to waste a lot of time re-explaining our services, our solutions, or just trying to move to the next stage. This situation has become amplified as we have moved to virtual meetings, as we blankly stare at a screen from home.

But it doesn't have to be this way!

By using a simple template, we can ensure that we get to our expected outcomes from our interactions with colleagues and customers alike.

We'll start with the Parameters of the meeting:

Meetings must have a beginning, a middle and an end. We're all busy people, jumping into and out of meetings in a flash. At any time, customers and staff may have to cut a meeting short due to other priorities in accordance with their roles. As such, it is of utmost importance to frame the meeting in terms of their time and the agenda items to be covered.

Next, we'll move to the Agenda.

The agenda should be sent to the attendees at least 24 hours prior to the meeting if possible. Below is a simple agenda for a sales discovery call:

• Introduce myself and learn more about your organization and your interactions with other (industry/services) companies.

• Discuss your key strategic priorities and challenges that you are looking to address in 2021 and beyond.

• Open the conversation to discuss collaborative opportunities that you would like to explore.

If you want to get more detailed, you can include something like this:

Hi [name], I'm excited to finally meet you on [date].

I have created a brief agenda of items that we can discuss including;

• Introduce myself and get some background on your organization and your (choose 1-2, topics based on the info that you have gathered prior to the meeting).

• I'd also like to discuss your key initiatives that may include: (choose 1-2 to discuss).

• We can then open the conversation to assign action items and create timelines for our next steps.

Part two of our series is coming soon... stay tuned!

Vince Bowry is the Founder of Blackbridge. For more information on our solutions, contact us.