In my movements from meeting to meeting every day, ensuring that business is growing, new clients are enthusiastic and existing clients are happy, I will sometimes run a bit late. This is not the end of the world as long as you place a call to ensure that your next meeting can expect you to be a little tardy. However how is it taken when there is no call?
Can killing time kill the will to buy?
Does tardiness affect the bottom line?
According to USA Today there are four (4) types of chronically tardy people:
1) Rationaliser type: Blames outside factors
2) Absent-minded Professor type: forgetful or disorganized
3) Deadline or Producer Type: Adrenaline addicted junkie. Gets a psychological high on having a jammed schedule
4) Rebel type: Defies authority and gets a high in keeping people waiting. Feel so important that feel people are willing to wait.
(http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2002-11-25-lateceo_x.htm)
The fact that there are categories of the tardy is phenomenal! What gets me is that after the first one - the rationaliser - there really shouldn't be any others. Sometimes meetings run late, and sometimes you get stuck in traffic, but how does this affect your bottom line?
According to a report on Evan Carmichael (www.evancharmichael.com) tardiness has such a butterfly affect that it is estimated to cost the US over $90 Billion (over 1% of their GDP). That is with an average of being 10 minutes late. Imagine what the real figures are!
Why is this so?
Tardiness is known to be one of the biggest forms of disrespect in business. That is world-wide, everywhere, no exceptions. So if we are disrespecting our clients and colleagues they are not likely to buy from us or work for us are they?
So here are some tips on how to be punctual, improve the impression that you are making on your peers and to ensure that you are making the most out of every meeting.
There are two reasons to be accidentally late for a meeting:
1. A previous meeting running over, and
2. Traffic and travel time
How do we stop the meeting running over?
Plan Your Agenda
Before the meeting ensure that you take 15 minutes to plan your meeting from start to finish. There is nothing worse that going into a meeting blind and "winging" it. When sales people and account managers do this they miss opportunities and inherently repeat the phrase "damn I should have said this" a couple of hours afterwards.
A meeting agenda should have a beginning a middle and an end.
Beginning: Introduce yourself and the reason for the meeting
Middle: Raise the points that you have worked on - do the demonstration - makes the investment proposition.
End: Summarise the points raised, build a list of action items and ensure that everyone knows which action items are theirs and that they write this down.
General Chat: This is where you ask how the family is going, what they are up to on the weekend and if they are going to order from you in the next couple of days.
Important note: Action items should have a due date on them. This is where people will in fact write them down.
Leave time for questions and conversation. Usually 10-15 minutes should be enough.
Most Important: Put times next to you agenda items!!!!!
Meetings starts: 10am
10am: intro: 5 minutes - 10:05am
10:05am: point #1: 20 minutes - 10:25 am
10:25am: point #2: 20 minutes - 10:45am
10:45am: Summary and action items: 5 minutes: 10:50am
10:50am: questions: 10 minutes - 11:00am
11:am: Meeting end
11:am: General Chat (ALLOW 15 MINUTES) - 11:15
11:15 leave.
Ensure That You Cater for Travel
Getting to a meeting early will never make an enemy. Plan to arrive 10-15 minutes early. This is good because you can run through your agenda, add any last minute ideas to the table, or read the paper in reception.
Use Google Maps (www.maps.google.com) to estimate the travel time from your previous destination to your next meeting. Take this time and add 5 minutes to cater for traffic.
When putting meetings into your calendar (Outlook, Google etc) you should also allow for your alert to come on when you have sufficient time to get there. If you have checked Maps and its going to take you 40 minutes to reach your destination, then there is little reason for you to get your reminder 15 minutes before. You should be almost there by then.
With a paper calendar, for the more stylish of my readers, make a note that travel is 40 minutes and your mind will bookmark this. Also this helps when you are making appointments around this meeting and you can see that you need to be on your way an hour before hand.
Make Time for Planning and Review
Book a half hour before and after the meeting for planning and review.
The day before the meeting, schedule some time for planning - get your agenda and travel times together.
The day after the meeting schedule time for review to go through action items, book follow up meetings or schedule follow up service.
So here we have it - you can be on time, maximise the effectiveness of your meetings and improve your sales and customer service all by just taking a little bit of time to manage your meetings effectively.
No plug today - this is some free advice from your Evolve IT Business Account Manager.
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