Business travel

Make every minute count on the road

Good time management will mean your business trip is more effective

The springs might be easing on the economy, but companies still want solid ROI on trips away – so, how do business travellers get the most from their time on the road?

When you’re away on business your trip can easily become a blur of airport lounges, long meetings and small-talk-filled networking events – all of which eat into your time and effectiveness.

So, what’s the key to getting the most from your time when you’re away on business? Making every minute count! To become hyper efficient at time management, follow DialExpotel’s five golden rules.

Be organised

It goes without saying that the starting point of good time management is good organisation – without it, none of the below will work.

Don't leave getting organised to the last minute – it’ll be more difficult to dovetail meetings and you won’t get first dibs on people’s schedules

The first thing is to not leave getting organised to the last minute – it’ll be more difficult to dovetail meetings and you won’t get first dibs on people’s schedules.

Once you’ve got your meetings down, diarise everything, down to the smallest detail. Seeing everything written down will help you to reorganise things that need it and cull those that are superfluous. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready for the next level…

Network not socialise

There’s no disputing meet-and-greets aren’t that valuable in the business world, but be careful not to let each one descend into a jolly – the time lost, tiredness and hangover will only impact on your effectiveness later on.

Have an agenda: arrive early when the meet-and-greet is less populated, speak to the people you want to speak to, then leave. You’ll have achieved what you set out to do and won’t be tired the next day.

You can help manage your time further by keeping conversations short. It’s a difficult balance to strike – few like to talk hard business straight off the bat and even fewer like to be bored to death with small talk – so make your connection, be pleasant and memorable, promise to follow up the conversation, and then do that, either by email or business-networking site LinkedIn.

Use tech to connect

The use of technology to make business more efficient is nothing new, but the past 12 months have seen an unprecedented explosion with the likes of LinkedIn, facebook and twitter.

Using social media to network is a great time-saver – you can do background research about the people you want to connect with and often also see their picture, which makes them easier to spot at an event. It also means you can get in contact beforehand, so you can cut to the chase and save time on pointless chit chat once you’re there.

Be mindful of how you use these sites, though. Many people on facebook and twitter mix their business and personal lives – a potential disaster if ever there was one!

Take a fresh look at time

You have only so many hours in the day – and one day meeting and one dinner meeting can take up a lot of it. Not only that, but if you have a number of meetings scheduled you might end up high-tailing it between endless locations, spending more time travelling than in the meetings themselves.

So, why not take a fresh look at your time and how you organise things? One such way is to base yourself at a central hotel and arrange for the meetings to take place there.

Similarly, if the person you’re meeting with wants to meet for dinner, why not suggest coffee instead? Even a long coffee meeting will be shorter than a dinner meeting – and then some.

Look after yourself

Being on the road takes its toll. Travel time, new schedules, eating richer food and having to be switched on all the time can be exhausting – which means you’re not at your best.

The first thing to remember is that flogging yourself is a false economy. Getting the 5am flight, too many meetings in a day and working till all hours will leave you a wreck – not the time-efficient, deal-crunching, super-networking machine your company wants you to be.

You might want to schedule your time from dusk to dawn, but make sure you also allow time to exercise, relax and eat well.

This feature was written by DialExpotel for Expotel, the UK’s leading hotel, travel and venue booking agency. To find out more about Expotel, call 0844 793 7300.

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