Difficulties meeting client face-to-face

Question

I am a remote project manager for company XYZ. For most of our past projects, we have no issues with managing the client's feedback; as always technology (emails, video calls etc.) plays a big part in bridging the geographical distance when it comes to communication.

However some less IT-savvy clients almost always insist to have face-to-face meet-ups for project review. The in-house account manager will then have to go down but most of the time he/she does not possess the technical knowledge to handle some of the client's requests.

I believe that in a conventional organisation structure this is where the PM will go down with the AM for such meetings. But for my case how can my company handle such a problem?

Answer 1

One of the keys to a successful meeting is having the right people in the room. That seems obvious but it's amazing how often it doesn't happen and you find yourself saying 'that's a question for Jane from the dev team' etc.

Before the client meetings take place determine an agenda that covers everything that both parties are likely to need to discuss - a PM should definitely feed in to this because you will have questions too no doubt. From this agenda you can work out who needs to be present to cover off all of the points.

Ideally all the relevant parties that you have identified will then be present for the face-to-face meeting. If they can't be (you don't say how remote you are) then the representative from your organisation should bring the appropriate equipment to dial the right people in to the call. Even the most luddite operation should be able to handle this - at worst you can be on speakerphone on a mobile. If it's a long meeting then the representative might only need to call certain people for particular agenda items.

If getting this kind of thing set up is proving difficult then you need to communicate the value (to both teams) of up-front planning and having the right people in the right places. The alternative is duplicated meetings, wasted travel time, project delays etc etc.