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Entrepreneur of Influence and Effective meetings
Entrepreneur of Influence and effective meetings
By Douglas Vermeeren
Meeting are required for operating an effective meeting. Some of these meeting swill be with potential clients, hiring people to help and support your business, potential partnerships and joint ventures and to train your staff to implement new strategies and take over jobs you need to delegate. Whatever the purpose of the meetings they need to be effective if your business is going to thrive.
For those of you familiar with our Entrepreneur Influence program you will know that I had the chance to observe and learn first hand from more than 400 of the worlds top achievers. Some of the companies whose leaders I was privileged to learn from included FedEx, nike, Fruit of the Loom, Uber, UGG boots, Disney, JW Marriott and others. In this relationship of learning I was able to observe how they prepared for and participated in meetings.
The following suggestions will help you to make your meeting more effective and valuable for you:
1) All meetings should have a clear outlined purpose. One of the top achievers that learned from stated it this way, “We don’t attend meetings without a purpose and we don’t attend unprepared.” Speaking to the point of purpose first, all meetings must have an objective. I see many entrepreneurs who will accept and participate in nearly any meeting that any one wants to have. This included meetings with a client. Many small business owners and entrepreneurs take meetings too easily and too quickly. They meet with anyone who could be a potential client or relationship without qualifying that individual and without determining a purpose for the meeting.
Everyone in the meeting should be aware of and in harmony with the purpose. The more all involved are moving in the same direction and with the same conviction the more powerful and effective your meetings will be.
If you come to the meeting in a careless and casual way your results will be the same way.
You can’t create results without creating a purpose.
2) All meetings should be timely — What I mean by this is that all meetings should be at the right time and have a time limit. Firstly, what I mean by the right time is that meetings should be in their proper sequence and when those in the meeting are in a position to act on things. Part of this can be described as qualifying. For example, you wouldn’t meeting with a customer who is not ready to make a decision. But I also see many entrepreneurs who meet with potential services even though they are not yet in a position to hire those services. They claim they are just doing research. Why would you research services in an ever changing marketplace if you are not ready to act. Research when you are ready. Have meetings when you are ready to take action.
Another important consideration is to take the appropriate time to have your meeting. As I interviewed the worlds top business achievers I had one of these leaders teach me this lesson in a unique way. When I first approached him I asked if I could have fifteen minutes of his time. I believed that asking for less time would make it more likely that he would say yes to meet with me.
I was surprised that when I showed up for our meeting he placed a stop watch on the table and indicated he would measure our fifteen minutes. Thankfully I was prepared and the timing worked. After the conclusion of our fifteen minutes this individual thanked me for being on time and commented that I had earned his respect to be able to qualify for future meetings.
In a future meeting we talked about time. He pointed out something very interesting to me. He observed that most people when they meet with a client or group meeting they feel a need to have it be at least an hour. He further pointed out that this was a pattern we grew accustomed to through our time in school,. The teacher told us it took one hour to learn math or social studies and so therefore that’s what we think it takes. And now when we meet with people we automatically assume it takes the same. When people plan on meeting for an hour they fill up an hour.
He then asked me to think back over our fifteen minute meetings and point out how much more we had been able to get accomplished because we were focused.
In all our business activities we are training people how to treat us and respond to our business and brand. How you use your time in meetings is a powerful teacher.
3)All effective meetings require preparation — Determine ahead of time what you would like your outcomes to be, your objectives, your questions and what you would like to have taught. Make sure you consider all possible questions and difficulties. As I observed and worked with the top business leaders mentioned about I found it interesting that their meetings were rarely brainstorming sessions to consider questions that they were paying other people to come up with solutions for. Most of the time these meetings were session where people presented their findings and answers they had already prepared and thought about.
As we work with top entrepreneurs and train them for success we encourage the same patterns. When you meet with a client you should have already considered their questions, challenges and objections. You should have answers to these that make sense. This is what will position you as the expert. No one wants to hire a brainstorming partner. They all want resources they can trust and benefit from. The more you can demonstrate competence in your relationship the more trust and confidence you will earn.
In addition, when it is time to meet with someone for the purposes of hiring, partnering or joint venturing the more clarity you have around what you need and can offer and how you will support and train that individual the more likely success is in the end.
While there is more more that could be said about meetings these are three of the most important things to get you started. Remember never take a meeting unless it has the potential to reward you for your time and effort and move your business forward.
Over the last two decades Douglas Vermeeren has conducted extensive first hand research into the lives of the worlds top achievers. He has the success strategies of top business leaders from Nike, Reebok, Fruit of the Loom, FedEx, KFC, United Airlines, Microsoft, Disney and others to share with you. ABC television and FOX Business refer to him as the modern Day Napoleon Hill. He has authored 3 books in the Guerrilla marketing series and is the CEO of Entrepreneur Influence . He is a regular featured expert on FOX, CNN, ABC, NBC, CTV, CBC, The Huffington Post, NY Daily News and others. Come listen to the Podcast Entrepreneur of Influence for more business ideas and support!
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