Tips for taking meetings

Tired of those meetings that the only purpose seems to set another meeting?  Want to have an effective meeting?  Connect with us as we share some tips on how to do this.  Listen to more episodes here.

Transcript

0:00

Hey guys, I’m Brooks and I Mandee. So we’re husband and wife, entrepreneurs. And we believe that life and business are a giant adventure and we want to live it with you guys. So let’s get

0:11

To it.

0:24

Mandee, welcome back. Good morning. How you doing? I am

0:27

Great. How are you? I’m good.

0:29

All right. So let’s get straight into it. Today we’re going to talk about, we’re talking about the art of meetings. I like it, the art of having meetings. And the reason why we’re going to talk about meetings specifically, is because i and i think you know, this about me, I have a love hate relationship with meetings.

0:49

You try to get out of them or not. You try not to take them very

0:53

Yeah. So I don’t mind a meeting. Right. But you are correct that a lot of times we’re talking about having a meeting and I’m typically The one asking questions about like, well, what’s the what’s the purpose? What’s the deal? What are we trying to accomplish here? And a lot of times, I find that we can spend five minutes and handle it, right? Maybe even via an email, which is really funny. And then, all that time a meeting wasn’t even needed. Right? Yeah, that’s why I says questions. It’s not that I dislike the meeting, I dislike it. When I go to meetings, and nothing is accomplished. I cannot stay in that, right. That’s a huge pet peeve if I’m gonna if I’m gonna sit around and not accomplish anything. I’m gonna be hanging out with you on the couch watching a movie chillin like that. Just relaxing.

1:31

Well, so the last meeting that you and I had together, you actually did something that you haven’t done before that I know of, as you asked for an agenda from the gentleman who was calling the meeting. And I thought, Yeah, I thought that that was a great idea because I really didn’t know what we were going in for. We really didn’t know what they were gonna want to speak to us about. And, and yeah, so you asked for an agenda. I did.

1:52

Yeah. And, um, yeah, and so that’s kind of, I guess, kind of tip number. Tip number one for today is if someone called Meeting with you. And so, so we may be speaking to people that are self-employed, or we may be speaking to people that are working for a company. So we have to keep that in mind as we’re having this conversation. But we may say, if we’re speaking to someone that works at a company, it may be their boss that calls the meeting, right? So while you can’t, you know, it’s all about your presentation, I think even if your boss calls for meeting, it may be honestly, it may be extra initiative of you taking in asking for an agenda so that you can be better prepared for the meeting. And the same, it’s kind of the same strategy I took in even though in reality, I just kind of wanted to better understand, like what we were going to be meeting about. And so we were meeting some people that are in similar space to us in business. And I had an idea that that’s what we were going to be talking about, but I just didn’t know if there was a right like a particular idea they had in mind or a particular partnership or something or whatever. And so yeah, I wanted to better prepare and just be able to make sure that we had a good A good use of our time. Right? Right. So yeah, so I think it’s a good idea. If you are going to have that meeting, yeah, have an agenda beforehand, understand what you’re going to be discussing. And so yeah, don’t be afraid to ask for an agenda so that you can be better prepared for that meeting. Yeah. Right. It’s brilliant. Well, thank you. And, um, so the other probably important part, I feel like of this conversation, and the second piece of meetings is, is to kind of set a pre qualifier. So one of the things that we do is his selling right, so people may, people listening to this may say, Oh, I have to set you know, appointments in order to have a sales meeting or whatever, you know, to qualify a customer. And so we just we’ve been doing this for a couple of years, a number of years, kind of setting some meetings in the midst of Like all of the projects that we’re doing, but we never, I feel like we have never qualified customers or potential partners customers before meeting with them. Oh, yeah. And we’ve never thought to do it but like, Alright, so just recently, we had a friend that runs a company that’s, that’s in town that gave us a really good idea. The point was, hey, like prequalify the customer before you go meet with them, because maybe you’ve had meetings where you have gone out, you’ve met with a potential customer that might want to market promote, advertise with us via our company, the mobile run down, right, and you’ve come to me frustrated more than once. on it. Now, this doesn’t happen all the time. The majority of meetings are, they’re purposeful. You go meet a customer, they know kind of, Okay, we’re talking about advertising. Maybe they have a budget in mind or whatever. But you’ve been to a few where you’ve come back and you kind of talk to me and been really frustrated, right?

4:59

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And you go, and sometimes you really want to get to the point. And the reason I actually had called our friend who owns another business, I was telling her about how I came at he called the meeting, he wanted to do business with our company, and I get there an hour and a half later, he hasn’t even gotten around to getting down to business, which I know is a bigger conversation about how to how to take control of back and forth conversation. But, you know, I had I left there. And basically, this person had already said that they didn’t want to spend any money. They didn’t. They thought they the other marketing efforts they had made, we’re not good. And so I left that meeting like, why did why did this meeting even happen? Why did he call me what’s the point? Why don’t you why did I spend an hour and a half of my life sitting and talking to this gentleman. And so I was explaining that to our friend and she was like, don’t do it anymore. She was like send a pre-qualification form for them to fill out and if they can’t fill the form out, don’t go meet with and so I think that was brilliant,

6:02

I think is brilliant as well. Yeah. Like I told you, why haven’t we thought of that? Right? You know, like, how have I not given you that idea? Right? The you make fun of me for being the king of ideas like how but yes, sometimes great ideas come from all over from right, they can come from your friends and commerce, you know, that are that are side by side with you running their own business, they may give you the best idea ever. So we are we’re in the middle of doing that, right? Like we’ll create a will create a form a PDF. And I told you, I said, hey, let’s make it as easy as possible for that customer, or the potential customer. You know, let’s also create like a Google form. So we’re going to create a form where they can either they can either fill it out online and submit it to us or if they want to print it out, right and scan it and send it back to us. They can do that too. Yeah, right. Yeah. So and when they if they are not willing to do that. What do you think like, should people take a meeting like if specifically if they’re in sales and they sell to a customer? I mean, I don’t know. I mean, maybe it’s a big maybe it’s a bigger client? Like, like, do you think you just have to use judgment? Or what do you write?

7:05

Right? If it’s a company that is new to the area, or someone you have, it’s a completely fresh contact that you haven’t met with them ever before. You know, go ahead, and I would send the form if they don’t get the form back with you. Maybe go ahead and call the meeting. But I mean, our go to the meeting, but I don’t, I don’t know if it’s someone who, hey, you’re just not sure about send the form.

7:29

I agree. I think it’s gonna be a game changer for our business. I think it’s gonna be incredible. So two takeaways from today. Takeaway number one, don’t be afraid to ask for an agenda for a meeting. It can make you actually look like you’re taking even the going above and beyond trying to be get prepared for that meeting. Right? Of course, it’s going to get you information and let you decide. Maybe you cannot even need that meeting. Yeah, there’s a possibility there. Right. So if you have that ability to say, hey, like, that’s a great agenda, like here, here’s actually the answers to that. You know, if you can do that, so one, get an agenda to figure out a way to prequalify that meeting, if you don’t know you’re hesitant or you, you know, you’re not sure how it’s gonna go, have that potential customer fill out some information, let them have some skin in the game for the meeting, right? So that’s why I call skin in the game like let them do that. So those are your two takeaways from today. Any final words and we’ll let these people go. Good luck

8:23

At your meetings. Good luck

8:24

In your meetings. Alright guys, see you next time.

8:41

Hey, guys, thanks for hanging out with us. We’d love for you to share it maybe with a friend review it don’t hesitate to reach out and say hello. You can connect with us and see the resources that we talked about at destroyed the box with.us that’s www.destroytheboxwith.us

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