Remote business meetings – 30 minutes maximum!

Remote business meetings are the new norm, whether you’re working from home or in the office. When you’re chatting with colleagues, bosses, clients, partners from another company – whatever discussions you’re having online, you want them to be successful and useful for all involved, otherwise what’s the point? But the format of communication is more special, and in order to make it as direct and effective as possible, it is good to think about the details in advance:

Doing business involves many moves in different directions, not all of which bring dividends. For example, a long-arranged online negotiation can fail because you engage in it while driving in heavy traffic. You are distracted, you do not grasp the essence of what was said, you fail to clearly express your position.

Another typical option: you join the meeting from a crowded place with a background noise. In this case, you have the option of muting the microphone when you are not speaking, but when you speak, you cause discomfort to your interlocutors.

To remain responsible and professionally fulfill the commitment, to understand the conversation and not to spoil the impression of yourself, plan your schedule so that you are on time in a quiet and calm place, away from noises and irritants, from where to conduct the meeting. Also plan the sound quality with proper noise-canceling headphones plugged into your mobile device. With them you will be heard and understood well, you will not be asked the same thing several times and there will be no obstacles to a fruitful dialogue.

Both the timing of business conversations and their duration are essential. Distance conversations should be scheduled at a convenient day and time for each of the interlocutors, but it is important to ensure that they do not drag on.

Time is money – this catchphrase is filled with special meaning these days, so try not to ask unnecessary questions, not to elaborate and repeat things already said, to structure in advance what you want to insert into the conversations.

In online business meetings, coffee breaks, snack breaks, etc. are rarely provided, as in real business negotiations, and in order to keep the attention of all participants, meetings should not drag on for more than half an hour. It has been proven: the ability to concentrate after a 30-minute serious conversation sharply decreases, so several hours of business meetings are a real test. When there are no pauses in discussions and they drag on, the eyesight is also strained, so it is important that each of the interlocutors strives to maintain a good pace of questions and answers.

When preparing the conversation, it is good to indicate its duration and not to drag it out – so everyone will be able to plan their next engagements.

Often important work meetings have failed because one of the participants could not turn on the sound, or they entered the meeting several times unsuccessfully because the Internet connection was weak. Time is wasted, and people’s patience is wasted.

Make sure your internet is stable, your business meeting platform and screen sharing app are online, and your headset and microphone are working. This way, you’ll be able to calmly present graphs, tables, ideas, and you’ll be able to write down and capture the important moments of the negotiation to build on in the future.

The equipment also includes good lighting, which is important to ensure so that it does not annoy you if it is too strong or insufficient.