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!

Benefits of Meeting Online

Business entrepreneurship is risky

Everyday you’re playing the odds. You’re gambling that clients, willing to pay prices high enough to keep you in business, will be there. In turn, you will continue to offer products and services for those clients. Even better, you’ll innovate in order to make your products or services faster, better or cheaper than your competitors’.
Your clients are fickle. They are impatient, selfish, lazy, greedy and ambitious — just like you. They want comfort, security, fulfillment, leisure — you name it — immediately or sooner. Between 1900 and 2000, 70 plus percent of the biggest and most successful American companies were acquired, shuttered or out of money.
Your clients have choices. They can buy from you, buy from someone else or not buy anything at all. In order to become or remain successful you must not be afraid to try something new. Could that one new thing be offering your clients the benefits of meeting with you online rather than at their office or yours?

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!

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?

Tips For Effective Web Conferencing

Today I interviewed Susan Grey. Susan is a web conferencing pro, having held a web conference a week for the last 52 weeks! Following are her tips:

Conducting a web conference is not different than conducting a face-to-face meeting when it comes to presenting the material. The strategy of interaction will be different. The biggest difference is that you can’t see them in person sometimes. And, even if you can “see” them, it’s through a webcam, which is very different than being in the same room.

There are a couple of things that you will need to know in order to conduct a web conference. These are the vendor or host, content, features and cost. When looking at a vendor you need to make sure that you’re going with a vendor that is going to be in a position to grow with your business but that is not so far advanced that people without the newest technology won’t be able to get on.

You want to make certain that your web meeting is understandable to anyone that may be in your target group. For example, if you do a web meeting on the newest technological features of a network application you’re going to have clients with a different level of technology than if you are delivering a web meeting on a way to effectively cook a five-course meal and still maintain an off-the-cuff entertainment atmosphere. In one instance you are working with technical know-how folk who might have access to the newest in computers. In the other you are working with people who may be normal home users and is going to be working with older equipment.

Features like instant messaging or the ability to use a whiteboard also need to be considered. Considering if you want to incorporate these from your vendor or use separate services is something to look into when deciding the way to conduct your web conference.

The content is the most important aspect of your web conference. You need your content to be informative, to flow from topic to topic in a smooth and related way. The meeting should be designed for your target market and be done in a way that engages your audience. Web meetings are more interesting if they are interactive so you may want to include time for questions.

Vendors all have alternative ways of pricing and you should think about which option is going to give you the most features at the least cost. Typically, web conferences are far less expensive than face-to-face meetings.

So there you have it! Tips from an expert. Want to try your hand at holding a web conference? Try a free trial of GoToMeeting.

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!

Small Lawfirms Benefit From Online Meetings

Web conferencing is a playing-field leveler for the small to medium law firm.  Online conferencing lets you visually interact with your clients in real time,  without the huge investment in a videoconferencing system and more office space for the system.
You don’t need to be a “computer geek” or have an IT department to hold a “webinar” or an online meeting.  All you need is your computer, a webcam, and an online meeting provider.  You can meet with your clients in real time, share documents with them, make changes to the documents and answer their questions over a secure phone line, for as little as $39.00 per month.
The best online meeting providers offer easy to understand tutorials and risk-free trials to help you take advantage of all online meetings have to offer.

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!

Warm Up Your Online Meeting

Online meetings benefit from icebreakers every bit as much as the face-to-face meetings.
Shy participants need help getting comfortable participating. Bored attendees need to see the content will be useful.
This doesn’t change just because we can’t see each others’ faces.
There’s also the intimidation factor of online technology. Many of us don’t know how to use the tools, or are uncomfortable
not seeing each others’ faces.
Next time you lead an online meeting, try incorporating one of these 4 icebreaker approaches and you’ll see a difference.
1. At least get an introduction
You’ll always want to at least have everyone introduce themselves. (If I’m in a meeting I want to know who else is on the call, don’t you?) If it makes sense for your meeting, have them add something personal about themselves as well. I like to guide the personal side with a question – favorite pet, something fun about themselves we may not know, best vacation spot, you get the drift.
2. Ask for a lead-in
Help everyone understand the reasons for the meeting. You might ask each person to share one thing they want to get from the meeting. Advanced online tip: if you have interactive chat in your web conference software, have everyone type in their answer. Think of it as a quick software orientation inside the icebreaker.
3. Visuals rule
Use a powerpoint slide to display a question or visual puzzle. This icebreaker technique is a chance to make sure the web conference software works for them. If you plan to use the webinar’s document annotation tool, have them try that feature out too.
4. Take a Poll!
If your webinar software supports it, post a survey for attendees to take. It can be an on-topic survey, particularly good as a lead-in for a training meeting, or even a “fun facts” set of trivia questions. If you give the survey results (and the correct answers) later in the meeting it can make a nice break when the energy starts to flag.
Decide on an icebreaker (or two) for your next online meeting. Your attendees will appreciate it.

Next Page »