I'm sure I'm not the only person that has a love/hate relationship with my SMEs. We beg them for content, we chase them down through emails and phone calls, we plead with them for reviews. It always seems that the busiest people in the company are assigned as my SMEs. Why is that? Here's my guess:

• The busiest people are often the hardest workers.
• The busiest people seem to have a great deal of knowledge on some subject.
• Companies like to reward busy people with more assignments (such as working on an eLearning course).

However, at the end of the day, we can't build a great course without them. So how do we work with them? Here's a short list of my secrets. Please add comments with your own tips:

1. Come prepared for every meeting with your SME. Know exactly what you want to accomplish and be prepared to get to the point.
2. Give your SME something to look at and review as quickly as possible. Most SMEs find it easier to tell you what's wrong with what you've written than to come up with brand new content.
3. Prepare a lot of good questions to help lead the SME toward coming up with goals, possible content sources, etc...
4. Provide a clear timeline of what the SME is expected to do by when. (This doesn't mean they'll adhere to it - it just will help them understand what needs to be done!)