If you are leading a stakeholder meeting for your project, you’ll need to be prepared. You will also need to be calm. However, if you have never ran a stakeholder meeting before, it can be tricky to be cool, calm and collected. This is what we can offer you as stake holder meeting event planners. The only job you need to do is turn up and be fabulous. We really can do the rest for you. Below we share our stakeholder meeting checklist. However, we can help you with this as much or as little as you would like.
- Attendees
Think about who needs to attend the stakeholder meeting. Make sure all the applicable people are invited. However, you want to make sure too many people aren’t invited at the same time. Just like the saying about too many cooks spoiling the broth, it can be the same with too many people at a stakeholder meeting. If needs be, multiple stakeholder meetings could take place for different audiences. This is something that we can look at and plan with you.
- What Matters?
You need to know what really matters to your stakeholders and the key messages you want to get across. This can be done by talking to someone outside of the business / project, like our event planners or project managers, or by taking a step back. Make sure that you address the concerns of your stakeholders. This is how you can ensure you show that you understand the needs, wants, hopes and desires of your stakeholders. It shows you are all on the same page.
- Goals
Make sure you determine the goals and objectives of the meeting. Include these in an agenda that is given to attendees ahead of time too. This will help to keep the stakeholder meeting on track. Think about why you are holding the meeting, why people should attend and what they will get out of the event. This is a really important part of your stakeholder meeting checklist and is likely to be the key to success with the stakeholder meeting too.
- Questions
There will be questions and you need to make sure you are prepared for them. While we can organise, manage, welcome and give an overview at the stakeholder meeting on your behalf, there will be questions you will be asked. While you can’t predict every question, take the time to plan responses to the questions you expect. Make time in the agendas for the questions too. This will help make your stakeholders feel valid. Perhaps in advance do a FAQ to assist this process.
- Handouts
The worst thing you can do at a stakeholder meeting is give each person a huge stack of paper. Some of it will never be read, and others will read it during the meeting instead of paying attention to proceedings. We can help you create, assemble and prepare handout packs for your attendees. These can include the project plan, the timeline, the scope and the budget for example. As the meeting takes place, these points can then be touched on and noted in their packs.
Need help getting your stakeholder meeting checklist together? Give our event planners a call. We have many years planning, presenting and managing stakeholder meetings. Our stakeholder meeting planners will happily share their top tips for success with you.