Top 10 Tips for Meetings

Posted on June 11, 2008 at 4:55 pm by Steven

When holding a meeting you want to make sure you are prepared to ensure success. The outcome of a business meeting can be crucial to a sales deal or the future direction of the company so you want to get it right. Here’s some tips for a winning meeting formula:

  1. Think carefully about the location. It needs to be easily accessible to all attendees and you need to provide attendees with directions and possible accommodation details if they are travelling in to see you. If you want a prestigious location try meeting rooms offered by a serviced office provider.
  2. If people have a long distance to travel to attend consider other options such as videoconference or teleconference. This can make the difference between having to constantly reschedule and being able to move forward with your meeting.
  3. Consider the type of room required. Do you have a big audience that would be more suited to a board room setting or is the meeting more intimate requiring less space.
  4. Make sure you have the required audio visual and presentation equipment required for the job. Consider what mediums other attendees of the meeting may need to use if they are also presenting information. If you are using a serviced office meeting room book equipment in advance to ensure its availability.
  5. Make sure you inform attendees of the meeting objectives, time, place and agenda. Make sure someone is responsible for following the agenda and sticking to times.
  6. Get to your meeting room in plenty of time so you can set up the room as required.
  7. Allocate a specific amount of time to each agenda point and try to stick to it. This will avoid having to rush through crucial points later on in the meeting.
  8. Make sure someone is responsible for taking minutes and that these are typed up and forwarded to attendees within 24 hours.
  9. At the end of the meeting summarise what the objectives where and what has been agreed.
  10. Ensure that the minutes make clear what the actions are and who is responsible for them and by when.