Are You Macallan or Glenlivet?

So a few weeks ago we held a poll about whether you think salespeople should be confirming all of their meetings. (Which, if you are using Spiro, you would be, since we remind you to…). Anyways,  Adam said he believed we should be – and I said poppycock.  Words were said, a bottle of scotch wagered, and we let fate (or our readers) decide the rest. Someone won (admittedly by a small margin) and now I need help deciding how to celebrate my victory.  Should I choose Macallan or Glenlivet?

But First Let’s Talk About The Previous Results

At the core of it, my argument with Adam is that always confirming your meetings is not the most productive way to spend your time.  Timing, your relationship with attendees, and how far out you plan your calendar events all play a part. We don’t have the time to be constantly monitoring our calendars and writing confirmation emails for the 500 meetings we jam into our work week.  To be fair, in some cases you can turn your meeting confirmation into a selling moment.

With the way that most people plan out their work calendars these days, I argued that more people would in fact say they actually do not confirm all of their meetings.

26% of you who took the poll said that you always confirm your upcoming meetings, no matter what.

33% of you said that you either rarely confirm meetings, or said that a sent calendar invite is good enough.

41% of you were fence sitters who said that it depends on the situation. Way to take a stand, guys. Remind me not to ask your opinion when we’re trying to decide where to go for dinner.

Now The Important Part

But What Do We Learn?

So what do we get from these stats? Well we seem all over the board so not necessarily much in terms of data trends.  About a quarter of us are anal enough to send confirmations for everything. A third of us don’t see the need.

But the rest – they could go either way. Maybe if there were a more efficient way to easily confirm your meetings, the poll would have swung the other way and Adam would be writing a gloating blog about making his employee buy him a nice bottle of scotch instead of the other way around.

Photos courtesy of flickr user sybrenstuvel