An agenda is absolutely vital to hosting effective business calls. Without one, you’ll have no focal points to work from, leaving your team members (or clients) in the dark or confused about what the point of the call was. An agenda is your blueprint, the guide from which you will draw talking points, discuss details, and set the pace of the call itself. Keep reading to learn why agendas are so important for business calls.
Focused Topics
If you’ve ever participated in a call that was all over the place, you understand how distressing it can be when participants stray from the original talking points. The weather, workplace gossip, or who won last night’s game can be distracting topics, pulling everyone out of their focus and away from what’s important.
With an agenda, you can bring everyone back to the focal point of the call when they begin to stray. Ideally, you’ve provided the participants with a copy of the agenda beforehand, so they should all have it at the ready. When the conversation begins to stray, you can say something like “Everyone, can we refer back to the agenda so we can stay on task, please?”.
Having key points on which to focus the discussion will help ensure that team members remain steadfast and understand the overall theme of the call. Keeping everyone on the same page and focused on your agenda will make your business calls ten times more effective than those without an agenda.
Team Communication
An agenda acts as your way of showing the call’s participants exactly what you’re planning on discussing, as well as any goals you hope to achieve by hosting the call itself. This communication can be incredibly useful in unifying the team to meet objectives, and team members will appreciate your extra effort to keep them informed.
A team that communicates well with each other is going to perform better; it’s that simple. Without clear and effective communication, someone is going to be left in the dark, making it difficult for you and your team to come together to solve problems.
Ideally, your agenda should be provided to team members sometime before the call takes place; usually a few days in advance. This allows the participants to review the material and make any suggestions or edits to the agenda itself. Allowing your team to participate in the creation of the agenda can grant you further perspective into any issues or goals, and increase team participation in the call itself.
Time
A business call is going to take up a portion of time out of the day. Time is the most valuable resource available, and, as the old saying goes, “time is money”. A focused meeting agenda will help streamline your calls so they take up less time, but achieve more.
The less time you spend on a business call, the more time you’ll have to attend to other aspects of the business. An agenda can help you map out exactly what needs to be completed within the specific timeframe, which increases efficiency and ultimately saves money (especially if you’re paying for a conference calling service).
If you’re unsure how to create an effective agenda for your calls, try using these great meeting agenda examples for a better idea of what a great agenda looks like.
Reduce Frustration
Frustration can occur with business calls when it feels as though nothing was achieved. You want your clients or team members to leave the call feeling satisfied and accomplished, not confused and frustrated. An agenda will help focus the call, allowing for goals to be reached and frustration to be reduced.
A frustrated team will perform poorly, and likely place the blame on the host of the call for the lack of organization. The last thing you want is a team who are frustrated with your calls and don’t feel they’ve gained anything from them!
Keeping team members and clients happy is crucial to reducing workplace stress and anxiety. Team members who feel stressed or anxious can perform at a lower level than normal, creating all manner of issues for the team and management.
Alternatively, frustrated clients may simply take their business elsewhere if they feel nothing is ever accomplished when speaking with you and your team. Essentially what we’re saying is that a good agenda is vital to fostering good relationships with clients and team members alike.
Set Goals
When you’ve created an agenda, you have key points of discussion from which to work. These points will help your team set goals not only on a team level but on an individual level as well. Team members will want to feel as though they’re growing within the team and a company as a whole, and what better place to set goals than a business call?
Setting realistic goals encourages growth and cooperation from your team, making for more effective workers and efficient projects. All of this adds up to one thing: more money in the business’s pocket!
Conclusion
A good agenda can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your business calls, bringing the team (and/or clients) together to solve problems quickly and think creatively to find better solutions. Using the right platform, such as a conference calling service, ensures the success of your phone calls with crisp audio and a secure, reliable connection.
