What We Can Learn from Three’s Company

Okay. There is really nothing we can learn from Three’s Company except that in 30 minutes you can get through a lot of rubbish. You can set up a conflict, throw in a few cheap laughs, sell some deodorant, resolve the conflict, more cheap laughs and roll credits.

If we drop the laugh track, Three’s Company has a lot in common with a good meeting. Stay with me; I do have a point. Whether you’re trying to grab a little time with a hiring executive, pitch an investor or connect with a colleague, try asking for 30 minutes instead of an hour. You’re more likely to get on the calendar and you’ll find the time much more productive once you’re in the door.

Marketing people depend on meetings to get stuff done and in my experience, there are three types of people when it comes to meetings: There’s the Chronic Canceller who accepts invitations but almost always finds something better to do, often at the last minute. Then we have the Afraid-to-Commit crowd who tentatively accept but insist on tons of information ahead of time and cancel if they don’t get it. My favourite, and the one for which there really should be a special place in Hell, is the Non Responder, who simply ignores invitations.

A growing number of people don’t bother listening to their voicemail messages or listen only to the first five seconds and blow it away. We all know (or maybe even are) people who read only a fraction of their email messages and respond to very few. But everyone has a calendar and most people, even the ones who don’t manage their messages, manage their time. One of the most beautiful things about Outlook is that if you have someone’s business email address, you almost always get your invite stuffed onto their calendar to be accepted or declined, but not very easily ignored.

Now to the half-hour thing: In my experience, people are much more willing to give up half an hour than a shorter or longer time period. I’m sure psychologists can shed some insight but I think the reason people will accept 30 minute meetings is this: An hour represents a significant portion of the day. A wasted hour is painful and annoying. For busy people, a clear hour is a welcome gift, as is a clear half hour. Such as, say, the one immediately following the meeting you just booked.  My most successful strategy is to book the first half of the hour. So 11 to 11:30 as opposed to 11:30 to 12.  That carves out a nice spot to chat but leaves a tiny hole in the other guy’s calendar where they can deal with email, grab a coffee or just have a few minutes of uninterrupted thought.

So if people are more willing to give 30 minutes than 60, are they more willing still to give 15 minutes? My experience is no. And my theory is this: asking for 15 minutes of someone’s time suggests that what you want to talk about is trivial. Fifteen minutes is for last night’s episode of Lost, comparing airport horror stories and sorting through the recycling in search of a receipt.  Another reason, I suspect, is that setting up 15-minute chunks in a calendar is messy and looks funny in Outlook.

Another reason I am in love with 30 minute meetings is how efficient we all become when time is tight. Many hour-long meetings, like hour-long TV shows, are really only using a fraction of the time productively. Attendees saunter in up to ten minutes late and begin packing up ten minutes early. By the time pleasantries have been exchanged and the white board marker found, the productive time is just 30 minutes anyway.

In a half-hour meeting, you can dispense with the pleasantries and dive right in.  In half-hour meetings, people may come late, but there’s no expectation you will wait for them before beginning. There’s an urgency and a collective, feeling that the time must be used to best advantage, so it’s necessary to make sure you have all your materal in order, a clear agenda and a reasonable expectation of what you can actually get done in half an hour.

So if you’re prepared, realistic and willing to break up a conversation into 30-minute chunks, you should find yourself better able to get in front of the people you need to see if you can think in terms of a sitcom.

BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams,
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Or follow me @bizmkter