Business trips are a brilliant opportunity to make new connections with potential clients, explore new markets, and give you and your team a chance to blow off some steam. But planning and executing a successful business trip is more difficult than you might think, especially if you take the whole team along with you. There are so many details to get right and it’s important that you make efficient use of your time because this is costing the company money. Unless you come away with something tangible, you can consider the trip a failure, which is why good planning is essential. These are some of the best ways to make your business trips more efficient and make sure you get something out of them.

Create A Clear Itinerary

Having a clear itinerary in place is the best way to ensure that every second of the trip is spent wisely and you don’t waste any time. It’s a good idea to use destination management services from MTI Events and other similar companies to help you put your trip together. Using a professional service to plan your travel arrangements as well as your corporate engagements takes the stress out of the whole thing. You don’t have to worry about a thing and you can be confident that the whole trip is meticulously planned out so you don’t waste a second.

Make Connections Before You Go

Hopefully, you will meet with some potential clients or partners on your business trip and it’s important that you connect with these people before you go. If you decide to travel to a city and set up meetings once you are there, you’ll end up wasting your time. People won’t drop everything to see you at short notice, so make those connections before you go. Set up some meetings and have preliminary discussions on the phone or via email. That way, you can get straight down to business when you arrive for your meeting.

Follow Up After Meetings

After meeting with potential clients or business partners, it’s vital that you follow up properly. Remember, you are not a priority for them, so you need to reach out and push things forward. Make sure that you have some good quality business cards to hand out and you get up to date contact details from everybody that you meet with. The day after your meeting, send them a follow-up email with a clear call to action. That might be inviting them to another meeting or sending them a quote, for example. If you leave it too long, they will soon forget all about you and you will miss that opportunity.

Plan Some Downtime

Although it’s important to be efficient on your business trips, that doesn’t mean you should spend every waking moment working. Travel can be tiring and if you pack in back to back meetings, you will burn yourself out. You need to be on the ball during your meetings, so make sure that you plan some downtime so you and your team can recharge your batteries.

Follow these simple rules and you can make sure that your next business trip gets results.