The first step in improving meeting performance is understanding how effective your meetings are at present. Which is where scoring meetings comes into play. But when you’re new to scoring meetings, it can feel a little strange asking clients to rate a meeting they’ve just had. Here’s how to broach the subject and bring clients on board with scoring meetings.

Clients are interested in themselves and their business, so start by explaining how they will benefit from giving you a meeting score and feedback. You can say you’re looking to improve the service they receive and that their feedback will help you deliver a better service. 

It also helps to say that scoring is very quick and simple – all they need to do is give the meeting a score out of 10, and briefly say why they gave that score. It’s as easy as that.

Here is some example wording you could use to start the conversation:

‘Just before we start today’s meeting I’d like to take a moment to let you know of a new initiative. Is that okay?’

Assuming the client says yes, you could continue…

‘Great, now we are always looking to improve our service to clients and we recognise meetings are an important part of our service. So, I’d like to ask you for some feedback at the end of this meeting. Is that okay?’

If you wanted, you could be more specific and emphasise how simple it is by saying:

‘Great, now we are always looking to improve our service to clients and we recognise meetings are an important part of our service. So, at the end of the meeting I’d like to ask you to score the meeting out of 10 and share one or two thoughts behind the score. Is that OK?’

However you ask, you can take the pressure off the client by saying something like:

‘This is totally optional so if you’d rather opt out let me know.’

Having secured the client’s buy-in, you then carry on with your meeting and ask for feedback at the end.