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How to plan and be a part of effective meetings?

by | Jan 29, 2018 | MBP

As your contacts and network grow, you will find increasingly difficult to find time to work because of meetings. It is necessary to, therefore, get on top of meetings all the time. If you fail to do this, you will be:
  1. ending up going to the meetings unprepared
  2. be a part of an unproductive/ineffective meeting
  3. Never get anything done on time
  4. fuck up your schedule
  5. Be sad. 🙁
To make sure above does not happen, you may want to use following tactics:
  1. Schedule all meeting at the start of the week:
    1. The first day of the week, you should be making a list of people who you should meet.
    2. You will, in most cases, know who you have to meet the upcoming week.
    3. Look at your calendar and make a tentative plan.
    4. Call them and fix the time.
  2. Finalize the agenda for the meeting:
    1. Again, this is something you should know.
    2. If you don’t, you can ask them when you call and understand what they want.
  3. Prepare for the meeting:
    1. Don’t go to the meeting unprepared.
    2. Know what your ideal WIN / WIN scenario is.
    3. Ask your self, what objections/ problems the client might have.
    4. If you have a confusion about deliverables, make sure you note it down so that you can clear that up during the meeting.
    5. Know your figures. Know how much discount you can give. Also, know how much behind the target you are. You might not want to give ppl discount if you are already going to meet the target. Or you might want to give ppl discount because you are desperate to sell something. Read this carefully, drastically opposite scenarios.
  4. Write notes during the meeting:
    1. Anything that is important. In most cases almost everything is important. If not now, maybe later. eg:
      1. You are in a meeting, client receives a call from a friend (say is from another business house), note this down. Next time, we want to get business from this another business, we can use this client as a referral.
  5. All good meetings end with clearly mentioned action steps:
    1. First meeting with a client:
      1. Thank you X ji, I now understand what your business needs, and i should be able to send you a proposal by this day.
    2. Follow up:
      1. Thank You X ji, as discussed in the meeting, we will need the following things from you for us to proceed further. Can I expect them by the end of this weekend? Will it be okay if i call you next week to check on the progress of the same?
    3. You can add to this list as you see fit.
  6. After the meeting email everyone in the meeting with a minute.
    1. This is the most important part of the meeting. And happens after the meeting.
    2. You send an email outlining everything that was discussed.
    3. If there was anything that we could send right away, for eg, proposal, we can send them too.
    4. Always thank the person with whom you were in a meeting with.
    5. Always end the email with a follow-up date or list of things to be done.