1. Agenda
Use your planner, paper or electronic, properly. Enter all appointments in your calendar and arrange appointments by geographic area. Select a day that you can dedicate to meeting clients or a time period on a specific day(s) of the week, which is suited to ensuring that your goals are in line with your timelines. Respect the time period allotted for the meeting as they need to keep their agenda on schedule as well.
2.Documents
Organize your clients or in-house department files according to the time period set for the meeting, and by client or co-worker. Many tools are available to file paper documents in order of appointments, such as an accordion folder. If you choose to put your papers in a briefcase, enter all documents under client name or category by business function, in a coloured folder.
For online documents, prepare a one page reference sheet, which will list the client's or colleague's names, document's names, directories / category for filing, type of documents in any format, and accompanying material in paper format. Not all documents are electronic as we still work with hard copies.
3. Notes for each meeting
This is a good time to do additional brainstorming and who knows, maybe something new will come to light, or other factors will come into play. Review and adjust notes.
Prepare an agenda and itemize all points for discussion in the order you wish to present this in Word. Print this out for your meeting. It is less distracting if you work with a paper copy in front of your client or colleagues than doing this online. Foresee any problems or roadblocks you may encounter, and offer a range of possible solutions. Allow space for comments from the client or questions you need to resolve at a later date. You don’t want to forget to talk about important matters even when they are minute in detail or comments, suggestions, or additional questions your client may have. Have you ever come back from a meeting and forgot to mention something important and have to make that extra phone call? If your schedule is very busy, it is easy to forget no matter how good the memory is.
Prior to meeting, reserve time to work or review documents needed for those meetings. Send a short e-mail message or pick-up the phone to confirm the appointment.
After the meeting, make a list of all items needed to complete the work resulting from the meeting. Enter the time allotted for work in your calendar.
4. Follow-up
Once your work is completed, call or email the client and review or add information to discuss and/or report about. Is it not a welcomed call when you know the service offered is considerate of your time, needs, and of your concerns. This short phone call or email will be valuable time spent for you and your client. This is a good time to make the arrangement for further meetings, if deemed necessary. It is important to allow the client to speak about any pending issues or problems, which were not resolved, or need more attention. Listen carefully, mirror what you hear, and suggest any new ideas, or tell them you will be working on it A.S.A. P. This is valuable feedback and information, and your clients will recognize that you are interested in providing excellent service.
5. Adjust
This is a good time to look at how you prepare yourself for meetings and appointments. Do you come in to the meeting feeling confident? Were you able to present or find all related documents for the meeting? Did you accomplish all that was needed to have a successful meeting? This will come through and your clients and colleagues will no doubt value the effort and time you put into your work and/or presentation.
Francine Renaud
Records Management Consultant
http://www.timeouttoorganize.com/
Tel: 250-763-3988
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