 Friends, I am so guilty of this habit that I've made it my summer resolution to do better in this area. And no, it's not to drink less wine on less summer patios because that would be darn near impossible. I'm talking about asking my clients and communicating to meeting partners the timelines that they need and I need to move projects forward. Why is this so important? Stick around and I'll show you. Hey friends, it's Leanne and whether you're a meeting professional, a hotel sales professional or someone like me a site selection professional, we all know how critical timelines are lending itself to an event's success. So why am I so bad at asking my clients for timelines and communicating timelines to my meeting partners? I feel it's a small piece of the puzzle, but yet I often forget to communicate that. And it's so important that we know what the timelines are and that we abide by the timelines and I want to show you why. For starters, when we set a timeline to an activity, it affects everything else that's downstream. And if we fail to set a timeline, then nothing downstream can get planned as well. So setting timelines actually affects everything else that follows. It can also reduce my stress if I actually know when things are happening. So if I'm cognizant of my client's timelines for decision making, I know that it might be a few weeks, even sometimes a few months or a few quarters before decisions are made. If I know that because I've asked for that timeline, it reduces the stress that I have trying to figure out where my clients are in the process. And this one is so important. It reduces the email clutter and the email follow up. How many emails have you received requesting follow up or how many emails have you sent requesting an update when if we had clear timelines in place, we wouldn't have to send all of those emails. And I actually did a video on a blog post not too long ago about following up on a proposal. You can find a link to that blog post and video in the description for this video. You should check that out. So without following up, and I think again, a lot of the follow up has to deal with timelines. So communicating clear timelines. And finally, it creates accountability. So now that you've set a timeline or you've communicated a timeline, now you have a goal to strive for and it creates accountability. But remember folks, if someone has actually given you a timeline, remember to abide by it. And the best example I can think of is when we're sending RFPs to different hotels and destinations, there is a timeline for responses. Often us as site selection professionals or meeting planners will receive emails from hotels and destinations asking how their proposal matches up. This is well before even the proposal deadline, the meeting planner hasn't even looked at it. So make sure you time your communications if a timeline actually has been afforded. So I need to know if I'm off base. Am I the only one who is terrible at asking for and communicating timelines? Because if you're in the same boat, I want you to join me on my summer resolution challenge to do a better job of asking for and communicating timelines to everybody in the meetings industry. So that's my summer resolution. And this week's Two Minute Tip Tuesday. Hope you enjoy it and we'll see you next week. Bye for now.