“I do start the web meeting at least 10 minutes early and
send the customer a test link and ask them to join early, but in spite
of that many customers are still late and so we lose 15 -20 minutes of the
slated time. This also happens when meetings are face-to-face. Got
any tips for encouraging customers to start on time?”
I often see the same problem – that it is the customer
who is late. Unfortunately, this is an endemic issue, due (typically)
either to company culture (“we always start meetings late”) and/or disrespect
for vendors).
Three suggestions for solutions:
1.
There is nothing
sacred about “1 hour”. I often schedule meetings (phone, web,
face-to-face) that are what others might consider of “non-standard”
duration: 45 minutes long; 75 minutes long; etc. If people arrive
on time and you finish early, then you give everyone a few minutes back in
their day. If people are 10-15 minutes late (and you planned on 60
minutes for the “actual” meeting), then it all works.
One small risk with this (and
it does happen), is that some people may still not respect the non-standard
time-frame and schedule another meeting that cuts into yours. Not much
you can do about this, however, other than to…
2.
Organize your
content using the inverted pyramid approach (like a news article) so that you
cover the most important topics up-front. If you do run out of time, at
least you’ve gone through the most important material. Which leads to
number 3:
3.
If you know you are
going to run out of time, and there is still important material to cover, a few
minutes before the planned end of the meeting you can ask:
a.
“Looks like we may
run out of time, based on our original plan for 1 hour, shall we go ahead and
continue for another 20 minutes now, if we are all available?” or
b.
“Looks like we may
run out of time, based on our original plan for 1 hour, shall we schedule a
follow-up meeting later this week when we are all available?”
Hope these suggestions help…!
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