How do you spell love?

The answer is T-I-M-E. That’s how your children and all the other important people in your life spell it. They believe the amount of time you spend with them is equal to how much you love them.

Your understanding and affection for others grows when you spend time with them. When you are too busy to spend time with kids, spouses or significant others, you lose touch with their lives. In the case of our kids, they go off into their own personal world of school, friends and other activities.

Time is irreplaceable, especially in relationships, be they business or personal. The most successful among us create uninterrupted blocks of time they can spend with the important people in their lives.

Make a decision now to redirect and reallocate your time away from low-value tasks, like traveling to meetings, and toward high-value activities.

Plan to spend more time face-to-face with the most important people in your life. Free up your personal time by taking advantage of technology like online meetings. Meeting online saves that most precious of commodities, time.

The people you love will thank you for it.

Making Nice

Want to know what really works to influence people? Making nice. That’s it in a nutshell. Instead of meeting with your clients to do the talk and sell hustle, why not just take them out to breakfast or lunch — and leave the business presentation back at the office. Getting to know your prospective client, building trust and a friendly relationship is a smart way to do business.

I can hear you now — who has time for that these days? If you are going to be successful you must make the time to get to know your prospects and clients as friends and partners. Be like a farmer sowing seeds.

When you leave your breakfast or lunch meeting ask if you may contact your client in the future. If he or she agrees, great. Make that business meeting online, rather than face to face, and you’ll make up the time you ‘wasted’ by not talking business at breakfast!

Add Some Show to your Tell

It’s Wednesday morning and you’re at it again. Calling prospects, following up
leads and doing the sales and marketing two-step.

This time, though, you are actually sensing interest from the person on the
other end of the line. They’re asking questions, probing deeper into your
offer. Great! You can’t wait to get to their office and show them your proposal
in person — but wait.

Why waste all that momentum? Instead, convert the ‘tell’ to a
‘show and tell’ by inviting your prospect to an immediate online
meeting where you can educate them visually, as well as vocally.

If you don’t know how to use online meeting software, not to worry. Simply
find yourself a 30-day free trial and get to work learning how to use it. Lots of
products promise to save you time and money, but, in my opinion, the online
meeting really delivers on that promise.

Get Control of Your Life

In order to achieve goals and become your best, you need to gain control over your time. It’s well understood that having a sense of control over your life is the foundation of happiness, confidence and well-being.

Use every time saving skill or tool in your arsenal to gain mastery over your day. Discipline yourself to work on your most valuable tasks first, while your energy is high.

Changing your life to increase time mastery often requires making new decisions about how you will spend your time. It may require you to learn a new set of skills or learn a new way of doing an old thing.

The truth is, you can’t manage time, but you can manage yourself. Plan your day in advance — the night before. Make a list of what you need to accomplish the next day and let your subconscious have some time to work on it while you sleep. This is covert learning at its best.

Don’t be surprised if, when you awaken the next morning, you have ideas or insights that help you check off items on your list!

The Value of Extra Time

Let’s say, instead of driving across town to meet with clients
or colleagues, you could take the meeting, get through the agenda and accomplish
your tasks all from the comfort of your office.   All that and you have an extra 1
to 2 hours of time in your day.   We won’t even talk about the savings in
frustration or even aggravation from having to get in your car, negotiate
traffic, find a parking spot … you get my meaning.

What’s the value of that extra time?    It could be that you’d simply get more work done that day.  Maybe it would free up a spot to fit in that workout you’ve been meaning to do.   Or
perhaps allow you to knock off early and spend some time with the kids.

Using online meetings lets me do all that, all the time.   I can meet with my virtual
assistant, explain what I need her to do, show her the documents in question and
answer all her questions, in real time, without having to leave my office.   Did I
mention my VA is located about 10 hours’ drive from me?

Online meetings let me work closely with my assistant who lives in another part of the country.   Just another benefit of the technology!

Web Based Conferencing Saves the Day!

Last week I was talking with a colleague who used web based conferencing to stay in touch with out-of-state clients. She finds web based conferencing saves time and money by avoiding travel. She also finds it helps her stay in touch with clients better than just a phone call.

She told me a story of how web based conferencing saved the day, even with an in-state client who was only a few hours away by car. Seems after a long rainy spell the river that goes through her client’s city flooded the downtown area. My colleague literally could not get across the river to visit with her client. At stake was a high-dollar contract that had to be worked out right away.

Not to worry! My colleague used her web based conferencing subscription to work through the contract with her client in real time, just as though they were sitting together in a meeting room.

These days, web based conferencing can even be accomplished via your WIFI enabled iPhone or Blackberry. Fuze Meeting lets you host and attend web conferences, view multimedia content in real time, plus chat with co-workers and friends – all with enterprise-grade security — and the iPhone and Blackberry apps are free!

Host a Carbon Neutral Meeting

The next time you need to present your latest findings, update your across town clients or work on a document with your business partner, think carbon neutral meetings.

It’s easy to try. Just take advantage of the FREE TRIALS to hone your skills. It will cost you nothing out of pocket.

How many things can you say that about these days?

How Green Is Your Business?

Want to do your part to help the planet? Take your next meeting online.

By reducing your travel miles, you will greatly reduce your carbon footprint:

Consider that, on average:

• A full size car (18 – 29 mpg) emits 12,000 pounds of CO2 yearly.
• An SUV (10 – 18 mpg) emits 20,000 pounds of CO2 yearly.
• A roundtrip flight between NYC and LA emits 2,000 pounds of CO2.

Try a free trial of GoToMeeting. Do something good for Mother Earth!

One CEO’s Take on Net Meetings

“We have chapters in three states and resources from Maryland to California. There are monthly online meetings with each chapter, quarterly meetings with each member, and interchapter meetings. I did a comprehensive study of the available Web conferencing services available. Our speaker was from Chicago and I was able to facilitate the meeting from my office in Fort Worth. We accomplished in one hour and 45 minutes what normally takes four hours of meeting time and we never left our respective offices.”

This from the CEO of a leading nonprofit organization!

How’s Your Travel Budget?

How’s your travel budget these days?  An Orbitz survey of more than 600 business managers revealed that 79% were pressured to slash their travel budgets.

So if your travel budget is bleeding red ink all over your bottom line, you’re not alone.  You’re scrambling for cheaper flights, a smaller car, cheaper hotel rooms – anything that will help save on travel costs.  And the competition for those commodities in increasing!

Want to slash your travel budget while providing the same level of service to your clients?  Just take a meeting — an online meeting, that is!

Online meetings let you interact with clients, business associates and even vendors in real time.  With no additional costs for travel, food or lodging.  And no time lost in traveling.

Three of the top online meeting providers offer you access to their services for as little as $39/mo.  For that ridiculously low price, you can meet with up to 15 people — as often as you need to.  There’s no extra charge to you or your client(s) for the telephone connection.

Check out our online meeting provider reviews – you’ll find a solution that works for you.

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