Today’s Quote: You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question. – Bill Gates
Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Everyone hates meetings because they often end up being time wasters, but they do serve a purpose. Today I’m going to teach you how to make them super efficient.
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
Meetings are very useful, but so many people don’t use them properly.
They take up too much time.
They aren’t run properly.
They don’t achieve anything.
And yet, I tell you to schedule meetings with your VA clients all the time. So why would I say meetings aren’t that great?
Because a lot of people don’t run them well. That’s really the basic problem with meetings.
So let’s talk about how to make your meetings work.
First things first, I call them production meetings. Because what we cover in them is about what is going to get done, and also because the word production indicates that there is a purpose to the meeting.
Secondly, these are scheduled. Regularly scheduled. When we are working with clients, the more time we have to work the better for everyone, so it’s important to not stop what you are doing to take a meeting. You set up your calendar in your meeting and you work the rest of your time around it.
I used to have a weekly production meeting with my clients – I’ll tell you more about how I ran those later in the episode, but we would typically meet once face to face (Zoom), on Mondays, and then the rest of the week we would communicate by email and project management system. It was effective, even for my busiest clients.
When your clients know you have a meeting once a week they can plan for it – and yes, although sometimes you do need a second meeting during the week, if you let the client book endless meetings you are allowing them to form a very bad habit – not every email or question needs to be a meeting.
Third, these are brief meetings. The biggest complaint about meetings is that they take too much time and get too little done, so avoid that at all costs. When you are organized and when there is a purpose, setting a time of 15 minutes or 20 minutes is the best way to go. These meetings are to make decisions, not go over every single detail of your work together. Even with my busiest clients, we kept meetings to 30 minutes or less every week. Everyone appreciates that, and everyone buys in for sure!
So how to run a meeting so it works better?
Here are a few of my best tips:
- Take charge
Don’t let clients run your meetings. There, I said it. Clients are not the ones who are tracking your time or working within their own budget. They are not the administrative expert of the relationship. That’s you. So you need to take charge of the meetings. Set the date and time – and time limit – and invite the client to the meeting. When you are the one who calls and runs the meeting, you can control the flow and the outcomes. After all, the meeting is for you to get clarity on what the client needs done.
2. Set an agenda
Be sure you know exactly what you are going to cover in your meeting. Create and agenda and stick to it. For my clients, I had a set agenda depending on what services I provided for them. My business coach clients the agenda went something like this: 1. Money (what’s coming in, what is in arrears, what is happening with that) 2. Clients (client issues, client updates, etc) 3. Ongoing projects (quick status update on what was outstanding for things like blog posts or event setups) 4. Upcoming projects (longer term stuff we were working on that was in process and 5. New Stuff (what happened last week that will result in new work down the road)
The key to the weekly production meeting is to give a high level overview of what is going on – details are for your project management system.
With that agenda, there were specific topics we would discuss and both of us knew what to bring to the call to ensure that we covered it all and still stayed within our booked time. Very efficient.
3. Keep it on time
Another complaint is that meetings run over time. Because you have taken charge of the meeting, it is up to you to keep it on time. Everyone’s time is valuable, and it’s important to stay on task.
Use your agenda and make sure that if something goes down a rabbit hole you save it by saying something as simple as ‘okay I’ll get that info and circle back with more information’.
Don’t screen share on your call unless the client needs to approve something and you have to show it to them. Don’t do research on your call. If a decision can’t be made on a call because there is further research to be done, it’s an open item and it goes on the schedule to be worked on in the coming week.
Keeping a meeting on time also means starting on time. If you are attending a meeting, show up 5 mins early or on time – not 5 mins late. Don’t extend a meeting is your client shows up late. Implore them to show up on time or reschedule.
4. Leave with action items
The purpose of a meeting is to make decisions, as we have already stated. So that means when a decision has been made, then it’s time to take action on it. Summarize the action items for the items discussed, and then keep them up to date in your project management system.
Take notes during each meeting – according to your agenda, and provide those back to the client so you both agree on what was discussed and decided. Make sure you don’t send a transcript, just a brief summary of item discussed and what follow is necessary.
And again, if something requires more research or discussion, add it as an open item for next meeting and circle back to it on the next production call.
5. Follow up
If there are open items from your meeting, be sure to follow up with them – enter them into your project management system as a project or task to be completed, and keep the client up to date on progress until completion. Calling them next steps on your agenda works great.
A little trick I have learned is to schedule your meeting for 20 minutes, but book 30 into your own calendar. End your meeting on time and take the next 10 minutes to process the action items and information from the meeting. That way you can close it out, bill the client 30 minutes and be organized for your week to come.
If you haven’t run meetings like this in the past, you can do it!
It may take some practice in the beginning, so you can start with 30 minutes if that helps – but always try to do better, and get them as efficient as possible. If you have 5 clients and each other them needs 2 hours of meetings a week, that takes 10 working hours out of your schedule. Not to mention that client is now getting billed for 8 hours worth of meetings every month instead of 8 hours work of work done.
By keeping them to 15 minutes and make them work for both of you, the client only gets billed 1 hour for meetings in a month, and more work gets done. Win win!
Doing meetings more efficiently can buy you back that time, but it also vastly increases your productivity – and your communication with your clients. It asserts your expertise because you are the one running the meetings.
Working efficiently is something we can work on together in The Virtual Circle, my mastermind group for Virtual Assistants. Check it out at www.YourVAMentor.com/TVC (the virtual circle) – I bet it’s exactly what you need to start getting fabulous clients for your VA business.
Need Some Help?
If you need some help with working more efficiently, time management, or productivity, reach out to me at tracey@yourvamentor.com. I’ve helped hundreds of VAs just like you through their challenges and got them on their way to the next level. I’d love to do the same for you through private coaching or one of my group programs. Let me know how I can help!
That’s all I’ve got for you this week, thanks for tuning in to learn to become a ridiculously good Virtual Assistant.