Nate Riggs: Social Business Strategies; communication, social web strategies, & passion in Columbus, Ohio.

Do you have clients outside of your backyard?  How about business partners? In most cases, that’s pretty common in today’s business environment.  Thank you, Interwebz.

At Social Business Strategies, a good amount of the clients Cheryl and I work with live outside of central Ohio.  The nature of the work that we advise and train them on, as well as that of the programs we implement, is more like a marathon.  It’s not project work or even campaigns with finite beginnings and ends.  We help our clients move the needle towards organizational change and the corporate adoption of social media tools as a business solution.

With that, regular “status” conversations with clients are absolutely essential.  We make it a point to have weekly – and sometimes even biweekly – discussions on any program’s progress. We brainstorm, address challenges, troubleshoot technology and devise workarounds, plan action items and assignments, and build consensus among team members during those conversations.  From my experience, these are all mission-critical elements of successful movement towards achieving our objectives.

How To Lead More Productive Collaboration at a Distance

From our own experimentation in the last few months, we’ve made some changes in how we approach status conversations with our clients.  Below are some of the things we do to lead more productive collaboration at a distance.  By all means, please steal this.  Feel free to use any of these ideas in your own work:

Simplify the agenda.
Don’t kill time writing out too many details on how the meeting will progress in a long and formal document.  Remember that most of us busy professionals get to reading the agenda about 5 minutes before the meeting starts.  We all move fast.  When you build your agenda, try to make it as simple and readable as possible. MindNode is a excellent tool for building your agenda in the format of a mind map.

Here’s what that looks like:

Example of a MindMap Meeting Agenda

Get visual.
Conference calls are great, but they also can create problems.  For one, reading nonverbal cues is important.  Aside from the long pause when someone on the other end is confused, you lose that type of communication over the phone.

Look at tools that can make your regular calls with clients more visual.  Skype is great for one-on-one communication.  Less people use ooVoo, but it’s better software in my opinion.  At any rate, video conference is good for one-to-one meetings.  We’ve found that using good web conferencing software that allows you to share screens, documents, online whiteboards and websites, helps to keep everyone focused and on-task.  Everyone gravitates towards WebEx and GoTo Meeting, but there are tons of free options out there that work well.

Be the lead.
As a consultant, agency or corporate leader, your job is to do just that – lead.  It can be tricky to find a balance between giving your client (internal or external) enough floor time so that they can deliver the feedback and information you need, while also making sure the meeting stays on-task and moving in a productive direction.  As the leader, you need to set the tone of the conversation early.

Here are some things we do to lead the conversation:

1. Set up each agenda point with the parameters of the project and original objectives.  Ask your client for consensus.
2. Recall the milestones of the project and the current status of the work.  Ask your client if they are comfortable with the progress.
3. Bring up any roadblocks.  Ask your client for feedback, ideas, priorities or any changes.
4. If changes are offered, discuss them further.  If those changes fall outside of the scope of the initial program, discuss how the client would like to approach that and ask for consensus.
5. Summarize each discussion point and ask for consensus before moving on.
6. Take live notes (using your web conference software) so that your client can see what you are writing down and make adjustments if needed.
7. Don’t move on until you’ve reached mutual consensus on each issue.

Build an action deck.
Here’s where the online notes come in BIG time.  At the end of the call, take all your notes and create a dated conference summary.  Keep this short and sweet with only the most important information.  Bulleted formats work great for this type of recap.

With Social Business Strategies’ clients, we’ve started using PowerPoint decks, mostly because they’re easy to standardize.  By nature, using presentation decks also tends to force brevity.  Decks can also be easily exported to PDF and emailed in no time at all.

Here’s an example of one we use with Incept (client) so you know what I mean:

8.9.10 Incept Status Call

The 24 hour rule.
You’ve had a successful meeting.  You’ve created a detailed but brief action deck. Everyone who attended – including you – is charged up and ready to move forward with making things happen.  Now what?

The real value of any meeting lies in how and when what was discussed is executed.  We’ve found that there seems to be a 24-hour window before your client team (and your own) will return to your normal, hectic day-to-day routine and lose the excitement from the meeting.  When that happens, things have a tendency to fall through the cracks.

Make it a point to get the ball rolling on your action deck within 24 hours of the conversation.  Doing that will have exponential benefits for your client program, your relationship and your own productivity.

What did I miss?  What tricks can you add to have more productive collaboration at a distance?

nateriggs

I advise mid-sized & large organizations on how to adopt and use social media to market through organizational culture and better serve their clients. I'm also a blended family dad who enjoys music, photography and distance racing. When I'm not writing here, you can find me writing over at the Content Marketing Institute. Like what you've read so far? Then why not subscribe HERE?

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