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.

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!

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?

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!

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?

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.

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!

This from the CEO of a leading nonprofit organization!