How do you (politely) tell your clients that they invite you to too many meetings everyday? I’m in 6+ hours of client meetings every single day. I feel like I work for them (I’m agency side for a reason) and it’s challenging to have relationships with my internal team because I’m never around! Not to mention my actual work suffers.

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What the heck meetings are they inviting you to?? I would say if they’re creative reviews/briefings/statuses that makes sense (and is actually in your control!). But keep it sane - for statuses, I do weekly whole teams status (if it’s absolutely bonkers, temporary bi weekly), monthly scope/billing status, and one weekly leadership status. If there is research or other meetings, I’ll send another team member and a strategist and attend *if* I can.

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This is spot on. I’ve been in a position where my client actually listed a member of my team as their automatic response out of office contact, and asked me to attend meetings on her behalf. We had a very delicate boundaries conversation, but ultimately used the argument that their work is suffering due to lack of focus on the projects at hand. We would either need to increase the SOW to hire additional staff, or take a look at the projects to see what could be eliminated without reducing agency fee. We landed on an agreement for less meetings.

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I would setup a meeting with my key Client contact and present a list of all standing meetings and details — day, time, agenda, attendees. I’d then ask for their help to prioritize/consolidate meetings. Come with suggestions so you can drive the conversation — I can get an email recap of highlights after this meeting, my whole team doesn’t have to join this meeting, this meeting can be every other week, these two meetings can be consolidated based on similar agenda, let’s try turning this meeting into an email.

Sometimes because the stakeholders are in different depts, they’re not aware of all the other meetings their team put on you. So showing a holistic picture (with summary line at the bottom - 6hr/day) should help them understand and work with you to adjust.

IF it comes to it, then express your concern that the work will suffer bec you’re not available enough for your team given all these meetings. It’s in their best interest to help you clean things up.

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Good question, What I’ve found about politeness is that if someone tries hard enough, they’ll be offended by anything. I try to be as direct as possible whenever possible. I hate the “client dance” Lol

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Are these calls out of the blue or scheduled calls?

When I was in your shoes, I would start to decline meetings that didn’t have a defined purpose or agenda and say I had an internal conflict. The next step is saying “I don’t know about you but I have been so double booked lately. I mapped out our scheduled meetings and found that there’s some meetings that could be reformatted so we get value.” You could even be blunt and say you are running hot on scope because we have this many meetings a week with this many people.

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Thanks all - I’ve tried the scope approach (they’ll be out of money by April at this pace), I’ve tried the double booked approach (they questioned my dedication to the account) and I’ve tried declining meetings (I am a VP too, Vice President 1 and I don’t think my clients care about my title, lol) and they ask me why I declined the meeting. Not trying to come across defensive at all - just running out of options! I have a team of superstars so it’s not that I’m the ‘silver bullet’ either but I do admit to being vocal on most meetings. We just get invited to all-of-their-meetings. I think this must be their way of connecting in a virtual world. And proving their working through setting up meetings. Ugh!

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A lot of times you can start to build your case for meetings you are required to be in. There are points like, what is the goal of having you attend (will you be given useful information to relay back to the team)? Are you adding to the conversation or just another name on a list? (A lot of times clients just add people to meetings). Is this taking away from working with the actual team and *implementing the requests from the client*. It’s important they understand your are their eyes internally just as much as their eyes externally so they need to allow you to collaborate with the team. Lastly, if you see meetings and within the meeting invites there aren’t clear objectives and required participants, you have every right to ask if you are required for the meeting. If it’s middle management that’s the time suck and they insist you just sit in on calls that nothings comes of them, I’d raise it up the ladder and propose a more structured approach to meeting times. Just make sure that you’re always asking questions etc because a lot of times you may think a meeting is useless but a good question will spark really useful conversations that will benefit your internal team. Hope this helps :)

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