For conducting advisory or consulting work, GoToMeeting has many advantages over a consumer product such as Skype.
Skype is similar to the telephone. You can use it to make calls and leave messages (voice, video or text). But webinar software such as GoToMeeting includes a scheduler. With this you can set up a recurring meeting for each client.
Not only does this help you plan regular check-ins with your client, you can both use the same link each time you have a meeting. It saves messing about creating new meetings and emailing a new link for each meeting.
And when a retainer client asks “What’s our meeting link again?” you no longer have to spend several minutes logging into GoToMeeting and copy and pasting the link in an email. Instead use the TextExpander app to automatically insert a client’s specific GoToMeeting link after you type a shortcode, which takes just one second.
For example, a client who uses our Virtual Marketing Assistant service is called Otium. In 20 seconds we created a snippet in TextExpander so that each time we type ;otium in an email or instant message, it instantly expands to their full GoToMeeting link (e.g. https://www1.gotomeeting.com/join/xxxxxxxxx).
Likewise, I have quick web meetings with my Virtual Assistant. I just need to type ;g2y (my shortcode I created for the snippet) and the specific recurring GoToMeeting link we use appears instantly.
It takes one second to type that into our internal messaging system HipChat and Ysabel my virtual assistant instantly knows I’d like to have a quick GoToMeeting.
When a team of advisors is fully scheduled with consultations and you have multiple client web meetings each day or week, you don’t want to be wasting time with ‘administrivia’. Smart use of tools like TextExpander save time and avoid errors so you can focus on high value advisory or leadership tasks.
