Worthy Articles: What constitues a good meeting?

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What constitues a good meeting?

via Israeli VC on Sand Hill road by taliaben on May 30, 2007

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Entrepreneurs often suffer from a pseudo-illness, commonly referred to as optimism, rose-colored glasses or just plain naivete. I suppose that it's a required "illness", otherwise, most would never start a journey in which the odds are clearly not in your favor.

In many of my meetings, entrepreneurs report about a recent series of meetings with customers/partners/investors to discuss their company. Most often they are very energized, having had good meetings all over.

I have a simple question for all them: "Why was it a good meeting?".

Here, I would like to present my definition of a good meeting, which will obviously vary from one type to the next. Here're a few points to note:

Title of person/people attending - and more specifically - do they have any authority to approve whatever it is you're offering
Actions items - where there any clear next step action items defined.
Who's action items were they? For example, if a company has a demo product, and the action is for the company to deliver the demo product, that's not a good sign.... need to have some traction from the other side (the buyer in this case). Action items that require the other side are a much better sign of a good meeting
Was the meeting interactive, or did the other side nod their heads a lot and do less of the talking.
Did the meeting start on time ? If it's not deemed important, often the people that you go to meet don't take you too seriously, and keep you waiting in their conference room.
Did the meeting go over time ? Again, not because you spoke too slow, but rather the others were asking so many questions, that you ran over the alloted schedule. It's no secret that you are given a small time slot, but it's amazing how easy it is to make time if there is real interest
Is there a time line for the next meeting/call/AI deliverable? Committing to a date makes it much more real.

This may be very simplistic, but I think worth quantifying before declaring that a "good meeting" has taken place. I will blog separately about what I think is a good meeting with a venture capitalist...

Tags: business+meeting