How to Choose An Online Meeting Provider

We small business owners have to be careful.  We need to invest in growing our business, but not waste a cent.   Web conference software can help, if you understand what to look for.

Often, owners are afraid the service will cost too much. They worry they might get locked into a fee for something that doesn’t do what they need. Sound familiar?  If so, read on.

The good news is that web conferencing vendors have pricing plans geared for small business owners. For example, Webex’s MeetMeNow prices out to as low as $39 a month for an unlimited number of meetings (15 participants per meeting). The other top-tier companies (Cisco, Adobe) have similar plans.

The trick to deciding whether the finances make sense is to figure out what you’ll save.   Are you traveling to meetings? Internet web conferencing will save travel dollars.  Are you always pressed for time?  Web conferencing lets you be in “two places at once.”  When you calculate your savings in dollars and time, you’ll probably agree that web conferencing is a good investment.

Next, determine what features you absolutely must have.   If you’ve used internet conferencing before you probably already know what you need.  If this is new technology to you, take advantage of free trials to see which of these features make the most sense for you.

• Audio Conferencing: If you’re interested in VoIP calling (calling over the Internet) you’ll want to check whether the vendor provides this.
• Video Conferencing: If you have a webcam on your PC and are comfortable using it, you’ll want a vendor that allows for video streaming.
• White Board: Virtual whiteboards are a great tool.  Your group works together to draw out a new concept, just as if they were in the same room.
• Annotating Documents: Do you want to read and edit documents together?
• Number and Size of Meetings: We like a plan that allows unlimited meetings.  Some vendors will limit the number of participants per meeting, but how often do you need more than 15 people on a call anyway?

Bottom line: You’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose by taking advantage of online meeting vendors’ free trial offers!

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.