If you’re a small business owner, you know that meetings can take up a good chunk of your time. You may have to meet existing clients, potential clients, and your team. This can get a little overwhelming. That’s why it’s so important to know how to run a meeting.
An ineffective meeting costs you both time and energy. You don’t want to feel like you’re going around in circles, mixing up your schedule, or chasing clients for follow-ups long after you’ve met. To help you avoid these pitfalls, we’ve created a comprehensive guide on how to run a successful meeting.
We’re going to walk you through the process from start to finish. Here are all the steps you need to take before, during, and after an effective meeting.
First things first, you need to know how to measure your meeting’s success. An effective meeting achieves its purpose without wasting time.
To get you on the right path, we’ve compiled some meeting musts:
✅ Make sure everyone is on the same page about the meeting’s purpose: This sounds obvious, but ensure everyone is informed about what you’re trying to achieve. Have a clear goal and stick to the matters at hand.
📝 Share a clear agenda ahead of time: If you want everyone to arrive prepared and help keep the meeting on track, you need to share an agenda before you meet.
⏰ Start and end the meeting on time: Running late can quickly throw off everyone’s day. Start on time, keep things moving, and wrap up when you said you would. In short—respect attendees’ time.
🙋♀️ Only invite attendees relevant to the discussion: You don’t need to invite everyone and their dog to the meeting. Keep the list of attendees to the need-to-knows. It can be easy to get waylaid with too many voices in the room.
🎯 Make decisions and define clear next steps: If you make decisions during the meeting, keep track of them. You should also share them with the relevant parties after the meeting.
🤝 Give every participant a chance to contribute: Honor everyone’s contribution. If they’ve made the effort to attend, make space for them to be heard.
📬 Assign action items with owners and deadlines: If your meeting leads to action items (and it should!), make sure they’re clearly documented. Each task needs a deadline and a name next to it—who’s doing what, and by when. Be specific: should it be done by the end of the week, before the next meeting, or by next quarter?
📵 Minimize distractions (like multitasking or off-topic tangents): Although it can be tempting to check your emails while taking notes, or even to bring up new issues, sticking to the agenda is always the best course of action.
📌 Share follow-up notes or summaries afterward: Keep comprehensive notes that can be used to summarize the meeting's progress. There are plenty of transcribing tools available to help with this, so everyone can be fully engaged. Don’t forget to make the notes available to all attendees after the fact!
🔄 Make space for feedback or iteration to improve future meetings: Be open to suggestions on how to make the meeting better, especially if it’s a recurring one. Invite regular attendees to share suggestions—maybe the format needs tweaking, the right people weren’t in the room, or it simply ran too long. Being open to feedback shows you care about making everyone’s time count.
Now that you know the dos and don’ts of an effective meeting, let us walk you through the steps one by one.
From client discovery calls to team syncs, every meeting needs a reason to exist. Are you making a decision, checking in on progress, solving a problem, or kicking off a project? Having a clear purpose helps all parties arrive prepared with relevant talking points and goals.
Take a moment to think about who to invite. Sometimes many viewpoints are required, but often meetings can be more effective if you strip things back to the bare bones. Who are the absolute must-haves? If you want your meeting to be short, keep the attendee list short as well.
Everyone is busy and needs to prioritize. It’s important to respect everyone’s commitments, especially if you're working remotely across different countries or time zones. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use a tool especially designed for this task.
YouCanBookMe (YCBM) is an online scheduling tool built to help individuals and small businesses streamline the way they book meetings. You can easily share your real-time availability (down to the exact minute), block out periods, and set minimum notice windows. With YCBM, you can find a time to meet that fits everyone’s schedule without any hassle or back-and-forth messages.
A meeting agenda is an essential component for running a meeting effectively, even if it’s just a one-on-one meeting. Agendas set clear goals and help manage the flow of the discussion. Sharing an agenda in advance allows attendees to prepare, contribute, and stay focused. Simply put, agendas reduce the chance of surprise conversation topics that take up time.
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❓ Unsure how to create an effective client meeting agenda? We’ve got you covered. |
For a basic structure, we recommend including the details of the meeting (time, place, etc.) right at the top. Next, name the attendees and set the goals. Finally, list the agenda items in the order you’d like them discussed. Make sure you put the future-focused items at the end.
Here are a couple of examples to help get the general gist:
Picking the right location used to be a lot more straightforward. Book the meeting room at the office and you’re done. Nowadays, small business owners work out of homes, cafes, coworking spaces, and more. We also have the ability to collaborate with remote workers all over the world.
Whether you choose to meet online or in person YouCanBookMe makes it easy. Just set your preferred times and locations, and let people book whatever works best for them.
If you’re hosting a remote meeting, choose the video platform that best fits your needs. Zoom is ideal for short, quick calls like virtual consultations—its free plan allows meetings up to 40 minutes. For longer or larger meetings, you’ll need a paid plan. Google Meet is another great option, especially if you already use Gmail or Google Calendar, since it integrates seamlessly with your existing tools.
Whichever option you choose, share the details when you’re sending out the agenda/meeting reminder email so all invitees end up in the right place.
If you’re determined to meet in person but don’t have a permanent space of your own, be sure to pick somewhere that suits the vibe. For a more casual, intimate chat, choose a cool cafe.
If your agenda is a bit more formal or sensitive, like discussing internal issues during a staff meeting, book a private meeting room. No one wants to have a difficult conversation over the noise of an espresso machine. 😬
Sometimes you’ll need to run a meeting with people joining from both near and far. Ideally, everyone would be in the same room—but that’s not always possible. More often, you’ll have a mix: some people physically present, and others joining remotely.
A hybrid meeting is totally doable, but it can be tricky. Give lots of time and space to those dialing in so they don’t miss what’s going on in the room. It can be difficult to follow if side conversations are happening or technology is lagging.
If it feels too messy, consider going fully remote so that everyone has a level playing field to actively participate in the call.
You can plan a perfect meeting—but if half the decision-makers forget to show up, the whole thing falls apart. That’s why it’s crucial to send both a confirmation email right after the meeting is booked and a reminder email shortly before it starts.
A quick confirmation followed by a timely reminder can go a long way—and it’s one of the easiest ways to reduce no-shows. If you're not sure how to write these, start with our tips for crafting a great meeting confirmation email that sets the tone and shares the key details upfront.
In the meantime, here’s a simple reminder email template you can adapt and use right away:
And if someone still doesn’t show up? It happens. Here’s what to say in a follow-up email after a missed appointment so you can keep things professional and get the meeting back on track.
You’ve set the time, sent out the agenda, and invited everyone. Now it’s time to focus on how to run a good meeting on the day itself.
We recommend electing a facilitator who is responsible for the meeting's mechanics. It doesn’t have to be you—anyone can take on the role. Every meeting benefits from someone who keeps track of time, manages group dynamics, and ensures everyone has a chance to contribute.
Take a moment at the start of the meeting to highlight the objective. All attendees should have read the objective(s) in their agenda ahead of time, but a reminder is always helpful. Set the tone and expectations by being clear at the beginning.
Take advantage of your meeting preparation by sticking closely to the agenda. Use it to guide the conversation and avoid going off track. It is a shared record of agreed-upon talking points, so it can be really helpful when redirecting someone heading off on a tangent.
When you’re running the show, it can be easy to talk the most. While you have things to share, you invited your attendees for a reason. Encourage balanced participation and manage the flow. Curating an open forum will improve meeting productivity.
That being said, there will be times when you need to take a firm hand. Have some polite phrases in your back pocket for when conversation starts to drift.
Try:
Note-taking is vital for capturing key decisions, questions, and action items. It can be easy to lose track of all that was said once the meeting is over. Notes (sometimes know as meeting minutes) are great to keep for your own records and to share with attendees later.
There’s no need to be a typing wiz. Stay fully engaged in your meeting by using an AI-powered note-taking tool like Bluedot or Otter. You can record your meeting, then use a smart tool to transcribe your conversations, organize them into notes, and generate summaries. Neat, right?
Speaking of meeting notes, make sure you clearly assign action items. Name who’s doing what and by when. That way, everyone leaves the meeting knowing exactly what they need to do next.
You can then use the notes of each meeting to help you create a future agenda. When you have clear expectations, it’s easier to follow up next time around.
As you cross each item off the agenda, recap what’s been agreed upon before moving to the next topic. This is super important to avoid future misunderstandings. Tackle them right there and then. If things are unclear during the meeting, they’re only going to get more muddled after.
Part of running a successful meeting is ensuring everyone leaves with clarity. While you want to be mindful of everyone’s time, it’s important to leave about 5 minutes at the end to tackle any outstanding questions. Loose ends only mean more meetings. Spend time now to save time later.
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💡 Wondering how you can keep your clients happy? Check out our 8-step guide on how to improve client experience. |
Okay, you did it! You successfully ran your meeting, but the job’s not quite finished yet. There are a few post-meeting tasks for you to complete to make it a home run.
To keep the momentum going after your meeting, you’ve got to keep in touch. Don’t let all your great ideas get lost to time; write a meeting follow-up email.
This email should include:
If sending reminder and follow-up emails is the last thing you have time for, YouCanBookMe can take that off your plate. It doesn’t just handle scheduling—it also sends customized booking confirmations, reminders, and follow-ups automatically. You choose what the messages say and when they go out, so everything still feels personal without you having to do it all by hand.
Immediately after the meeting is the right time to update any live progress documents. If any decisions or resolutions were made, they should be swiftly reflected in project trackers or shared docs. The goal of a meeting is to move your projects forward, so make sure your records move with you.
Create space for your attendees to provide feedback after a brief period of reflection. Some parties may have new questions that have suddenly arisen. Others may have tips on how to improve meeting efficiency or logistical updates for future meeting times and locations.
This is especially important if it’s a recurring meeting, like a weekly client check-in or a bi-weekly team standup. You don’t want people leaving regular meetings unsatisfied. Try not to be too precious about how you like to do things. Have a "kill it if it's not useful" rule.
If people aren't finding value in this time, you either need to:
Any outstanding items should be resolved. Don’t leave room for misunderstandings or continued back-and-forth. Send timely and relevant updates to the necessary meeting attendees and stakeholders, and look forward to the future.
Meetings can be tough for some and a source of anxiety for others. Acknowledge decisions made or progress achieved —momentum matters! Highlight the positives to keep your relationships buoyant.
Although running a meeting can sometimes feel like a balancing act, a solid game plan can ease much of the heavy lifting. With the right preparation, clear goals, and a solid facilitator, you can get the desired results out of every meeting.
From beginning to end, each phase matters. Invest time in your agenda, keep your meeting flow steady, and stay in touch with your stakeholders. A tried-and-true routine will save you mental energy and ensure attendees feel familiar with the process and comfortable with each step.
Good meetings don’t happen by accident. You make them happen. As for scheduling, we think you need the right tool to help. YouCanBookMe makes scheduling simple, so your meetings run smoother from the start. Customize your booking page, set your availability, and let automated reminders do the heavy lifting.
Try YouCanBookMe today for free, and take control of your calendar.