Many businesses still rely on old fashioned communication methods such as fax machines, phone calls and regular mail delivery services. While these methods can certainly facilitate completion of a task, they are not always the most cost effective and efficient method to leverage. Many business owners discover that by learning and utilizing newer forms of technology that their communication speed and costs are reduced allowing for their business overall to run more smoothly.

One of my clients is an agricultural consulting firm that has been mentoring agricultural clients on a monthly basis over the telephone.

Their clients who were predominantly farmers would provide information to the consulting firm so that they could analyze and prepare feedback for their monthly business development calls. The farmers were entering their information into the consulting firms software program in order to produce a variety of financial reports, including:
Stocking rates
Paddock records
Budgets
Financial information
Pasture management

Before their scheduled monthly mentoring sessions, the farmer would print out each of these reports to fax to the consulting firm. The consulting firm and the farmer would then review and discuss these reports during their scheduled call time.

While this system produced some results for the farmer, there were several assumptions being made that may have hindered the full effects that the farmer was gaining from their mentoring time. One of the assumptions that was being made was that both individuals were looking at the same materials while communicating. And, that the communication with regards to these materials was fully understood. The information being discussed and the changes that were being proposed during these scheduled calls was the basis for the farmers ability to improve their business. The consulting firm was also relying on the implementation efforts of the farmer once the call had been concluded.

As an alternative option, the agricultural consulting firm began to utilize an online meeting room instead of a scheduled call to communicate directly with their clients.

One of the immediate values that both parties noticed was the ability to view documents and the proposed changes live instead of each party being responsible for their own note taking and follow up following the mentoring calls. For examples budgets were changed and the impact immediately seen!

Overall, switching the method of communication from the telephone to an online meeting room has enabled the process of mentoring to be more collaborative and more efficient, ultimately leading to an increase in the desired results on the part of the farmer.