Traveling to visit clients’ or potential clients can be a frustrating experience. Not only will you lose part of your day for travel, but you also can never guarantee the meeting will be a successful one. It’s no wonder that so many businesses now conduct business almost exclusively over the phone, video messaging services, and email.
All of this being said, there are still some huge benefits to face to face meetings. If you are willing to take the time to improve your meeting style, you can achieve far more in a day than you can in several weeks of email trails. Meeting face to face is the best way to get to know anyone so why wouldn’t you consider it? Here are a few strategies to help you get started including face to face meetings in your business model.
Your Place or Mine
Going to visit your clients is a great way to see their offices, meet more of their staff and get to know how they work each day. This kind of understanding simply can’t be had over the phone. Even a video conference call won’t give you an accurate view of how the team pulls together. Seeing their environment is the best way to get to know how a company or person really works.
Inviting your clients to your office is also a good idea. Just as you can gain an insight into how your client’s business is run from their office, they can gain a similar sense from yours. Of course, there are things you can do to make your office more attractive and welcoming to your clients so you can manipulate their impression to your advantage. Alternating between your offices and theirs is a good way to share the inconvenience of traveling to and from and the pressure of hosting.
How To Get There
Getting to your client’s offices could be as simple as a walk around the block. You might have to catch a flight to get there. Either way, you should think about the most convenient route. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the fastest route. You might prefer to spend a little longer traveling if the route is cheaper or allows you to work as you go.
Driving is often a good way to get between offices as you can go door to door quite easily. If you are regularly sending employees to go and see clients, you might like to try various enterprise solutions to help them. For example, Triplogmileage is a great app that will help you to monitor business travel and allows employees to claim their mileage easily.
Who Should Go
Sending the right person or team is essential. You should think carefully about who will attend the meetings you organize or are invited to. While it might be tempting to just send an account manager all the time, sending the junior members of staff responsible for producing particular areas of the work is actually a better idea. Allowing them to do some of the talking will give them a chance to shine and it’s a good way to show you have confidence in them.
The secret to Jeff Bezos’ success at Amazon has often been attributed to the pizza rule. This rule states two pizzas should comfortably feed everyone around the table. If you can’t feed everyone, you need to cut down on numbers. This is a great rule to follow, especially if you actually do bring the pizza! By the way, eating together, be it breakfast or lunch, is actually a great way to start a meeting. You can spend time learning more about each other before you jump into the meeting.
Smooth Running
Some people automatically see meetings as a waste of time. When you’re meeting face to face, you must ensure you make the most of the time you have together. Luckily, you can use the same tricks that make your business more efficient to make your meetings more efficient. You should set some clear objectives and eliminate as many distractions as possible.
If you want a meeting to run to time, cover all the details and not end up waffling on, you need to set an agenda ahead of time. Whether you set the agenda or your client does, you should make sure you both have a chance to look at it a few days before the meeting. This way you can ensure you both agree on the topics and timing.
It is totally natural for people to drift off topic from time to time. Though this is okay for a little while, you should try to bring everyone back to the relevant topic. As people wander off subject, gently bring them back in by saying things like ‘let’s come back to this at a later time’ or ‘let’s get back to the agenda’. You don’t have to be confrontational to keep everyone on track.
Go Low Tech
One of the main reasons video call meetings fail is the tech just can’t replicate a natural conversation very well. For all that technology can be used to make us more efficient, it is all too easy to overuse it. Just think about all the presentations you have sat through when just one slide covered the whole meeting!
The best face to face meetings are conversations not presentations so instead of thinking about what you want to say, you should think about the problems you want to solve. Just because you are talking to a client, it doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers. In fact, be open to questions being asked and learn from what is discussed.
The real value of a face to face meeting is being able to talk without any hindrances. You aren’t waiting for technology to catch up or trying to talk at the same time on the phone; you can just chat. Face to face meetings also allows you to clearly understand your client’s needs. You’ll be able to clear up misunderstandings and develop a plan that is just right for both of you. In the end, you will create a product or provide a service that keeps your client coming back for more. Now, isn’t that worth the trip?
Carolyn R. Owens has over 25 years of proven experience and serves as a Career Strategist, Executive and Leadership Coach. She is the President of Infinity Coaching, Inc. where she can help you up-level your skills, so you can up-level your income, career, business or life. Infinity Coaching, Inc. provides coaching, organizational training, personality assessments, and a signature program, the Infinity Coaching Inner Circle. Carolyn is certified to give both The Energy Leadership Index Assessment and Myers Briggs Type Indicator Assessment. You can find out more he about both assessments and other products and services at https://infinitycoaching.net.
