Etiquette Wishlist for Web Meetings

With jet fuel going through the roof and budgets tight, web meetings are the wave of the future. They certainly are here at OnePager; it's an incredibly efficient way to interact with lots of customers in a single day.

That said, some of the good-old-fashioned face-to-face meeting etiquette guidelines didn't seem to make the cut when we all went virtual. For example:

1. Be realistic: Only agree to attend a meeting if you are genuinely interested and intend to take action. The same goes for you sales folks out there: don't push people to take a meeting out of the kindness of their heart if you know it's a lost cause. Everyone hates rejection, but at the end of the day, saying "no" upfront can save both organizations a lot of time.
2. Use your calendar: There is a reason that your computer, smart phone, and even your wall come with a calendar. Calendars are amazingly proficient at telling you when you can or cannot meet, and reminding you of a meeting that you may have forgotten. Here are some specifics:
• Check your availability: Don't accept a meeting if it conflicts with something else. This includes accepting meetings that are adjacent to other meetings that you think might run late. I make a point of not accepting meetings when I am on vacation, for example.
• Set a reminder: Make use of Outlook's reminder feature or a reminder on your smartphone. Generally speaking, you have to turn reminders off, but that didn't stop a former co-worker of mine. He never set reminders for any meeting because he found them "annoying". Guess how many meetings he missed on a weekly basis.
3. Use time zones: It's a big world out there. Here on Earth, we have 24 time zones, some of which are more densely-populated than others! When you suggest a meeting time, it's courteous to specify the time zone. Otherwise, your colleagues end up guessing which time zone you are in, and a lot of people guess incorrectly.
4. Come prepared: This may sound high-school trite, but a lot of people will agree to a meeting two weeks out and do absolutely nothing to prepare for it during that time. For example:
• Complete tasks/readings: If you've promised to complete a task, discuss something, or review a document prior to the meeting, be sure that you do. If you don't, you're wasting everyone's time, and it's better to cancel the meeting than do show up and talk about nothing.
• Test your computer: Many web meetings require installation or other configuration prior to the meeting. Take 30 seconds before the meeting to make sure you can log into the web conferencing system. If you hit a snag, you'll have time to fix it instead of wasting everyone's time while you install.
5. Arrive on-time (or early): Showing up on time is courteous. Showing up early (even 1-2 minutes) is better because it allows you to prepare, and to deal with any pre-meeting issues, like a web conferencing system that doesn't work (see above). Arriving late is rude, especially if you don't let the other party know. If you have another meeting that is running over and you'll be 5 minutes late, send a quick e-mail to let your other participants know. If you'll be more than 10 minutes late, reschedule for another time. With everyone glued to their smartphone, there is no excuse anymore for being late to a meeting and not letting the other people know.
6. Cancel early: If you must cancel a meeting, do so as early as possible. Cancelling 5 minutes before (or 5 minutes after) doesn't cut it. Chances are, the person on the other end has spent time preparing to meet with you, and if you're not going to show up, that time has been wasted. If you're out sick, traveling, or on vacation, you can cancel all of your meetings the first thing in the morning and save everyone a lot of time trying to track you down. Always give a reason for cancellation--don't just decline an Outlook invitation. This is equivalent to slamming the door in someone's face.
7. Offer to reschedule: If you have to cancel a meeting, or you miss a meeting, you should reach out to the meeting organizer and offer to reschedule. Give a few times that you're available over the next few days. This makes it easier to reconnect later.

There are probably other tips that I've left off the list, but these are the ones that we encounter pretty much every day. Feel free to embellish if you can think of some more.

If you're a repeat offender, feel free to print this out and post it next to your computer :)

Customization in the World of Shrink Wrap

In the off-the-shelf software market, one-off customizations can be a nightmare for product managers trying to drive features with broad appeal. The question is inevitable, though, especially as larger and larger organizations begin standardizing on your software and adapting it to fit their own purposes.


Here at OnePager, there are only so many ways you can make a Gantt Chart, but we take a pretty disciplined approach to customizations, and really try to make the distinction between a one-off change and a feature request that, if generalized slightly, could appeal to other users.


Nonetheless, we do occasionally find ourselves in a situation where a customization or two is critical to winning a large site license, and the feature has no commercial viability outside the requestor's site.


In cases such as these, we have to weigh the potential revenue of the sale against the opportunity cost that our engineering team incurs when they have to go create some custom code. The difference between these two estimates is how we decide how much to bill for the custom work, or whether to subsidize it to provide further incentives for the customer to move forward.


That said, our frequency of requests for customization is relatively low--thanks largely to a great product team, and a well-defined market. I'd be curious to know if other shrinkwrap shops take a similar approach, welcome more customization, or try to discourage it altogether.

Non-Technical Salespeople in Software?

Having worked for a number of different software companies, including starting my own here at OnePager, I've met a lot of people who sell software and professional services.

It's always interested me how some technology companies hire non-technical sales staff, and then backfill the technical role with sales engineers. Having been a sales engineer myself at one point, I certainly get that that skills in sales and skills in technology do not always go hand-in-hand.

Here at Chronicle Graphics, we've had some salespeople who are incredibly technical--people who know the ins and outs of our OnePager Gantt Chart software almost as well as someone in our product or tech support teams. At the same time, we have had salespeople who never even bothered to install our products. They sold on value alone.

We've been fortunate that both types of salespeople have been successful here at Chronicle Graphics, but it does make me wonder if the days of sales teams that aren't technically hands-on are numbered (and by that same token, what happens to sales engineering as a standalone role?). Doesn't it make more sense for companies to seek out tech-savvy sales teams? Are there instances where you don't want a tech-savvy sales team?