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!

Goal Achievement Cheat Sheet

You’ve probably heard about this before, but here’s a little reminder.

The following steps will spur you on to faster and more efficient goal

achievement.

1.  Be clear.  Determine specifically what you want.

2.  Reduce it to writing.  Include the details.

3. If you have a large goal, break it into manageable chunks.   Set a deadline.

4. List everything that comes to mind that you’ll have to do to achieve your goal.

5. Prioritize the list you made in number 4 above.  This is your plan of action.

6. Do something right away to take action the most important thing in your plan.   I can’t overstate the importance of this!

7.  Each day, do something that moves you toward the attainment of one or more of your important goals.Keep that ball  rolling.

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?

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.

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.

Three Jobs for the Meeting Facilitator

Start with an agenda. Ask your manager what (s)he wants on the agenda.  It’s also a good idea to send an e-mail to the meeting participants, asking them what they’d like to see on the agenda.
If you have any issues you’d like to see discussed, put them on the agenda,too.  Perhaps you’ve read an interesting article in an industry publication or heard about something a competitor is doing. Put it on the agenda.  As the facilitator, you can use these tidbits of information as ice breakers, too.
Include everyone in the meeting. As you move along the agenda items, be sure to solicit input from everyone who’s logged in.  If someone hasn’t contributed to an area, ask him or her to summarize what the others have said.  In that way, everyone will feel a part of any decisions that are made.
Last, set a time limit for each agenda item … and stick to it!

Keep the meeting on track. The main reason facilitators are necessary is because meetings have a habit of getting off track, taking too long and not covering what needs to be covered.  A good facilitator takes care of the details, watches the times and makes sure everyone’s opinion is heard.

If you are planning any brainstorming sessions, be sure to keep them positive and encourage everyone’s input.  Remember that brainstorming is not a time to judge ideas. It’s a time to put everything on the table. Even the wildest, craziest ideas can sometimes trigger a workable solution, so you don’t want to discourage anyone.

Summarize agenda items before moving on. Once you’ve completed an agenda item, summarize everything that was discussed as well as any assignments that were made. Leave no dangling ends as you move to the next point.

Send out meeting notes. Write a summary of the entire meeting and send it to everyone who attended as well as those who should have been there but couldn’t, such as your manager. Get it in their hands within three days of the meeting, then encourage the participants to get back to you if they notice any discrepancies.

Team Building, Virtual Meeting Style

Are you familiar with the 4 phases of team building? They are affectionately known as Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. In order to get your team working like a well-oiled machine, you need to encourage candor, critical thinking and kindness – at the very least civility — among your members.

How well your team meetings go is a good predictor of how fast your team will get to the Performing stage. Let’s say you’re in the Storming stage. You know. That’s where the members don’t quite trust each other, or you, yet. There are turf battles emerging or ongoing. No one feels real comfortable saying what’s really on their mind.

What to do? Try this strategy in your next online meeting. Start with a blank shared document split into quadrants. Assign a relevant question to each quadrant. It’s good here to have a mix between subjective and objective questions like:

1. What potential do you see for our team?

2. In a perfect world, what would you have our team accomplish this year?

3. Name one thing you enjoy about your work.

4. Share your biggest concern about this team.

5. What one thing about this team is working really well?

Like all brainstorming sessions, let people pass if they can’t think of an answer. Give everyone about 30-60 seconds. This isn’t the time to analyze responses. Write everyone’s thoughts down so the group can see them.

You have a couple of options now. Take 10 minutes and let the members discuss the document and ask clarification from each other. Then, maybe, go back to your mission statement and see if it needs revision. Or, maybe you need clarification from the higher-ups on what the team’s goals ought to be. Here’s where your leadership/facilitation skills kick in.

This process doesn’t take long and yields good results. The most significant is that you and your teammates will gain a better understanding of each other. These insights will help your team quickly move into the all-important Performing stage.

Essential Tools for Successful Online Meetings

When you’re shopping for an online meeting provider, make sure to look for these valuable tools:

A “whiteboard” feature.  This essential tool allows freehand markups of documents and other presentation materials just like you were in a face-to-face meeting.

Another feature that you’ll want to have is the ability to transfer keyboard and mouse control to a participant.  This can really help a participant fully explain his points and call up documents he needs to assist his explanations.

A chat facility, so participants can communicate with you and others without disrupting the proceedings of the meeting, is invaluable.

Finally, look for moderator tools that include options like mute functions. This can be very helpful in shutting out unnecessary background noise that disrupts the sound quality of the transmission.

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