Meetings are incredibly pervasive across much of the business world. But while some meetings are incredibly productive, many can be too long or too unfocused. Nobody should leave a meeting wondering, “What’s supposed to happen now?”

On a recent App Mavericks video with Salesforce MVP Angela Mahoney and Productivity Fox VP of Marketing Brandi Johnson, we learned how you can make meetings far more productive. Solutions such as Productivity Fox, built by Cloud Coach, helps tracks tasks, manage projects, and make meetings more efficient.

Here are three ways you can make your meetings more productive.

1. Focus on the content of meetings

Whether you’re organizing a small meeting with a colleague, or a team-wide meeting, scheduling available time often takes up a large part of the work. Because of all the logistics involved, the actual purpose and content of the meeting often take a backseat. When the meeting comes around, there’s often no agenda, no note taking, and no action items created as a result.

Scheduling your meeting should not be the end of your preparation, and using an app like Productivity Fox can help. By placing an agenda, meeting notes, and action items in one centralized place, and emailing follow-ups to attendees, you’ll have effective meetings that initiate action.

2. Connect meeting information with existing tools

Many meetings relate to existing projects, clients, or sales prospects. But without incorporating relevant information about the meeting topic into a place where attendees can see it, you will waste time trying to get everyone up to speed. A simple solution could include integrating project management tools, productivity boards, or Salesforce opportunities and records into an app, to ensure everyone has the right data to make meetings more effective.

Using Salesforce and Productivity Fox, you can link meetings to virtually any Salesforce object. By connecting meeting minutes and action items into Salesforce opportunities, accounts, or records, you’ll always have the most up-to-date information about a customer in one place.

3. Better prepare for meetings

People are busy, and it’s enough of a challenge just to get from meeting to meeting on time, let alone prepare for every meeting ahead of time. If a meeting organizer takes time to quickly put forth an agenda, and each attendee spends five minutes reviewing the agenda and any relevant links or documents beforehand, the meeting will focus more on advancing projects forward.

With Salesforce and Productivity Fox, the meeting organizer can easily grab and add relevant information for a meeting, and your team will know exactly where they need to go to find relevant information beforehand.

You can watch the full App Mavericks video featuring Productivity Fox below:

To learn more about Cloud Coach and Productivity Fox, visit their listing on the AppExchange.