Tips on getting the most from Business Meetings - Part 1
by Startacus Admin
Business Meetings:
If you’re starting out in business, meetings are one of those things that you’ll just have to get used to. And quickly. There’s no escaping them - from sole traders to fully fledged limited companies, they’ll 
happen at all stages of your startup journey. Here at Startacus we’ve had our fair share of business meetings and we’ve picked up some pretty useful tips as we’ve gone along. And us being us, we’re gonna share them with you folk!
Business meetings can be a great way of developing - yep you guessed it - business and without getting too cliche-ridden, there is a lot of truth in the saying “people buy from people” - and often that rapport building that you can do in a half an hour meeting can be the equivalent of a few months’ work on the phone, sending emails or trying to get the right person.
Having said that, business meetings can be both glorious successes and humongous failures - we’ve been in a few of both! With this in mind check out our first 4 tips below which we hope will point you in the right direction. The next 4 points, as you clever folk have probably already worked out will appear in part 2...
Plan
Most, if not all of the first 4 points need to happen before you get to the meeting itself. If you are not prepared for a meeting expect all of the points we subsequently mention (unless you are remarkable at ‘winging it’) to fail and fail miserably. Planning was admittedly my biggest failing, and is quite often or not a typical mistake that most people make. If you do not plan for the meeting - where you are going, how you are going to get there, who you are meeting - their background story, their responsibility etc, what you are likely to need to know, all the company information and news stories you can find, then you may look like a prize fool, when a pretty basic question is asked of you. Work out the detail way before you go!
Reconfirm
Just because you are fab at time management (and of course you all are) you cannot expect all of your clients to be the same. Therefore rather than wasting a load of your time, planning, travel and energy in getting to a meeting and finding out the person you were meeting is either ‘not there’ or ‘none the wiser’, simply send a confirmation (aka reminder) email a couple of days prior to the meeting. Yes, by doing this on occasion a meeting may actually be rescheduled or at worst cancelled - but would you not rather that be the case, than turning up and being turned away at the door. Not only that, your client may actually not even remember that a meeting had been planned, so in turn sending a confirmation email can save embarrassment all round. Coronavirus. How do you survive as a business owner with minimal or no business at all? Consider the following tips... Crowdcube launches campaign and calls on the government to take action to protect Britain's entrepreneurial future... A UK-based social enterprise Lanterne, has developed, and is soon to launch, Keep Your Distance, a free app that will help us observe social distancing. Bring! is a digital grocery tool that simplifies grocery shopping for you and anyone you are shopping for. In a bid to help brands during the current pandemic, the GreenJinn grocery app makes some rapid changes to its service Coronavirus & furloughing employees. Nichola Hailes of Payfit looks to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about the job retention scheme. For startups entering the food industry, here's why accurate labelling on ready-to-eat food products is important. Whether you’re looking to create a frugal startup, or it’s already up and running, here are 4 tips to reduce costs while keeping the work environment pleasant. The Belfast-based startup that provides a fully managed 24/7 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for securely storing and sharing assets, packages and containers. The insolvency technology startup secures funding to help support the UK's most vulnerable consumers to avoid bankruptcy
Continued on page 2...
Subscribe to our newsletter
If you would like to receive our startup themed newsletter, full of the latest startup opportunities, events, news, stories, tips and advice, then sign up here.
.png)
If you would like to enable commenting via your Startacus account, please enable Disqus functionality in your Account Settings.
- Save Our Startups campaign launched 5th Apr 2020 Crowdcube launches campaign and calls on the government to take action to protect Britain's entrepreneurial future...
- Cerebreon the Irish deep learning startup raises £1.5m in seed funding 31st Mar 2020 The insolvency technology startup secures funding to help support the UK's most vulnerable consumers to avoid bankruptcy
- Chivas Venture divides this year's $1m Venture Fund between 26 global Startups 23rd Mar 2020 In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chivas Divides its $1m No-Strings Venture Fund Between 26 Startups
- The open-source design of emergency ventilators for COVID-19 patients 20th Mar 2020 World Wide Community of over 500 designers engineers & medics finalising prototypes for safe scalable manufacture & rapid field deployment..
