Three Rules For The Perfect Business Meeting
Conducting a successful business meeting is an art that very few people have mastered. People often underestimate how much planning and work goes into a business meeting and so they arrive unprepared. That’s bad news because a lot of the time, you won’t get a second chance to impress your potential business partners, which is why you need to make sure that everything goes perfectly the first time around. If you struggle with business meetings and you never seem to come out of them with the result that you hoped for, here are some ways that you can improve before the next time.
Have An End Goal
The reason that a lot of people struggle in business meetings is that they don’t have an end goal in mind. They may know that they want to pursue a business relationship with these people but they don’t have a clear idea about the specifics of what they are hoping to get out of this particular meeting.
For example, if it’s a first meeting with a supplier, are you hoping to find out about pricing structures and potential lead times? If you’re meeting about a marketing collaboration, do you want to find out more about their customers and whether they would be interested in your products? If you go in without a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve, the meeting will lack structure and the other party may feel that you’re wasting their time, which is never a good thing. Before you go into a meeting, know exactly why you’re there so you can get straight into it without messing anybody around.
Understand Business Etiquette
This is very important because if you don’t conduct yourself well in a business meeting and you make simple blunders, it can really put people off. Business etiquette is more important than people realize and there is a lot more to it than you might think. There are even schools which are an etiquette authority and can teach you the correct way to conduct yourself in various business scenarios. If you are unsure about business etiquette, it may be worth taking a short course at one of these institutions so you can be sure that you’re putting yourself across in an appropriate way when you have your business meetings.
Learn Local Business Customs
Every country has its own customs when it comes to business and people around the world do things in a very different way. If you’re going on a business trip and meeting with potential business partners from other cultures, it’s vital that you learn about their local customers beforehand so you don’t accidentally offend people. For example, in Italy, it’s expected that you’ll spend a lot of time socializing and dining together before you even mention anything business related and it can be quite offensive if you try to get down to it right away. However, the opposite is true in Germany and if you’re wasting time with small talk, they’ll begin to get frustrated with you.