Negotiators spend quite a lot of time on project calls. Nothing special about this – regular or ad-hoc calls is something treated as a daily routine, but sometimes attending calls eats enormous amount of the negotiator’s time, which is quite risky: how one can efficiently negotiate if there is no time for that.

There is a popular meme: “I survived another meeting that should have been an email” – it is funny, yet close to the reality. According to Forbes, 36% of people do not believe the volume of email they receive is appropriate for their role, and that 27% of all meeting time is wasted.

Let’s try to figure out how one should understand when a meeting is excessive and when it is necessary, let’s review what is commonly discussed during contract calls:

• Providing site/country updates. A Negotiator may be stuck on the call where all start-up / clinical teams provide their updates country-by-country or site-by-site, and the negotiator is only required to say a couple of words about the contract status. As a result, the negotiator spends a couple of hours on the call where he/she actually speaks five-ten minutes tops. On the other hand, some valuable information can be shared during that calls, and that may help the negotiator to define site-specific negotiation strategy and set-up the priorities.

• Reading trackers. This type of meetings is very popular, yet it can be inefficient. Spending time on the call reading what is already available in a tracker accessible by the team can hardly be considered productive. However, if there is still the need to discuss the tracker, it can be a signal that the information there is hardly understandable. To avoid such situations please check our article on the trackers – this may save some time for your actual negotiation work.

• Focusing on site-specific issues. The importance of such meetings can hardly be overestimated. Site’s non-responsiveness, unusual requests, escalations can be quickly discussed and resolved if the negotiator has the chance to meet with the project manager and CRAs ‘at one table’ (we all understand the negotiation is a team work). Surely, the steps agreed during such meetings shall be summarized in the meeting minutes or a separate email, but it will be just one email instead of the endless chains of email discussions.

So, we see that the meetings are something unavoidable for the negotiator, but negotiator’s participation there can be optimized – updates can be provided through the properly completed trackers (the negotiator can agree with the project team on frequency and content requirements), yet when it comes to site issues and escalations, it is better to discuss them during the call. Our practice shows that normally one meeting per week per project is quite enough.

PS: This topic is so popular now, there are even special companies dedicated to improving meeting vs. email balance. We can’t help sharing this awesome article with you, hope this will be interesting and useful for any member of the project team.