Meeting, noun. 1. A coming together; assembly. 2. A joining. 3. A hostile encounter, as a duel. (Webster's American Dictionary)
Meeting, noun. 1. Potentially effective method for planning, education, training, problem-solving. 2. A forum for selling. 3. A ridiculous waste of time. (Jack Burke)
Like a politician, I'd better make a full disclosure right off the bat: I might not be totally objective in a discussion of meetings. They have engendered in me a life-long love-hate relationship. In fact, sometimes I'm amazed that business can survive and prosper in spite of meetings. During my earlier life in corporate America, I wondered whether the true goal of business was to conduct as many meaningless meetings as possible, with profits merely an accidental by-product.
Having stated my position and accepting the possibility that Meeting Planners International may be planning my lynching, let me add this:
Meetings can be productive.
Singular Focus: Key To A Meeting's Success
Two acronyms provide useful ways to analyze meetings: PMS (planning, motivation, sales) and AEIOU (appearance, education, incentive, organization, understanding). PMS relates to the purpose of the meeting;
AEIOU helps to evaluate its effectiveness.
The key to successful meetings lies in the establishment of goals. A productive meeting is goal-oriented, while non-productive meetings result from crisscrossing goals and confusion. Whether internal or external, a singular focus is essential to a meeting's success.
Planning Develops Strategy
Planning is probably the most abused and underused aspect of meetings. The first misconception is that planning meetings are strictly internal. This is understandable given that most planning is conducted internally. Short- and long-term business planning forms a prime example of internal meetings.
But many planning meetings are external. For instance, an annual review with a client is really planning, not sales. Risk management falls within the external category. Even asking a client to evaluate your service is really planning because it gathers the information necessary to develop future actions. Don't make the mistake of placing all client calls in the sales category.
Internal or external, planning requires one to develop strategies-maps of how an agency intends to achieve a desired result. That result, or goal, can include optimistic growth targets or realistic problem-solving. The meeting may be a brain-storming session or a final pre-implementation review.
Motivation Incites To Action
If you think that the PMS acronym ignores education and training, fear not! They are merely spokes in the wheel of motivation. After all, motivation is incitement to action. And action without preparation (which includes education) can be disastrous. Motivation covers even more territory than planning.
Internally, motivation informs sales meetings from the 'rah-rah' variety to the brow-beating, fear-inducing type. However, motivation must also be involved in every type of education and training necessary to agency operations. Motivation can even play a role in an annual meeting to disclose next year's plans to the general staff. If it incites to action, or provides the tools necessary for the action, it is motivational.
Externally, motivation can easily be confused with sales. Don't make that mistake. Motivation lays the foundation for selling; it is not selling itself. For example, holding a value-added seminar for clients and prospects is educational, thus motivational. Yet by educating your clients/prospects about risk, for instance, you pave the road to a selling opportunity. Similarly, a meeting on a boat or the golf course should be primarily considered motivational. The ambience of the location or occasion helps motivate the client or prospect to place or retain their account with you. It helps build the relationship that is crucial to subsequent sales.
Our final category, sales, brings to mind the chicken-or-egg dilemma. Is selling the reason behind planning and motivation, or do planning and motivation result in sales? There are arguments on both sides, but I tend toward the latter-without planning and motivation, there wouldn't be any selling. Selling, though, is not merely a goal, it also plays an essential role in smooth-running internal operations.
An outside sales meeting can take place within any type of venue, and it's impossible to name them all. Suffice it to say that the evaluation acronym, AEIOU (which we are about to review), is all-important to successful preparation for sales meetings.
Sales Meetings Convince
Sales meetings inside an agency are not as easily understood. If you were to call for a sales meeting, most people would visualize a meeting with the agency's producers. Such a producer meeting would probably be directed toward planning or motivation. To sell is to convince, and in a sales meeting, you will convince somebody of something. For instance, if you are about to implement a number of changes to reorganize your customer service operations, a meeting is in order to convince your staff that the change is for the good. The key is to understand the purpose of the meeting. If you need to convince anyone of anything, it is a sales meeting.
Evaluating By AEIOU
Preparation is essential to successful meetings. Once you have established the goal of the meeting, knowing how its effectiveness will be evaluated is necessary for proper preparation.
A = Appearance
If you are going to gossip, whine, or simply chew the fat, admit it. Don't try to dress it up and call it a meeting. You'll end up giving all meetings a bad name.
Here are some basic guidelines to calling a meeting:
1. Have a purpose or goal.
2. Set an agenda.
3. Determine participants.
4. Set a time frame.
5. Keep a record.
6. Follow up.
About 10 years ago, while visiting an auto dealership I was invited to attend their weekly meeting. Having attended many such meetings in the past, I looked for a quick exit. I felt that car dealers didn't know how to conduct meetings; disorganization, meandering and repetitive discussions, rah-rah, and butt-kicking seemed to be the mainstays. Fortunately, there was no escape, and the visit turned out to be enlightening.
About 10 minutes before the start, people began convening in a meeting room. They all carried calendar books, reports, and notepads. At the specified time, the general manager called the meeting to order and verified the presence of attendees. For the next 60 minutes I sat in amazement as the entire meeting proceeded according to Robert's Rules of Order. Minutes were read, action reports were given, old business was put to rest or updated, new business was entered for consideration, and decisions were made. Toward the end, gripes were entertained from the various representatives of each department within the dealership. Finally, the meeting closed with awards and recognitions for an upbeat ending.
I had never seen such a meeting within the auto industry before, nor since.
It's not surprising that this dealership is immensely successful.
E = Education
Education is loosely defined as the development of knowledge. Whatever the type of meeting (planning, motivation, sales), it is wasted time and effort if the meeting does not encourage and develop knowledge.
Have you ever felt that somebody should have recorded the last meeting and played it back at the latest meeting because nothing changed? That is an example of a meeting that failed to be educational. Be creative. If you don't have something new to offer, find someone who does. Education adds excitement to a meeting.
Picture a sales producer and a prospect that he or she failed to close. What do you imagine the odds would be of closing that prospect down the road with the exact same approach and material? If it didn't work before, it probably won't work the second or third time around. The successful producer searches out new ammunition, new approaches.
I = Incentive
Will this meeting incite anyone to effort? That is the question!
First, know what you want to accomplish. Then pre-plan a strategy for the meeting to achieve that goal.
Have you ever sat through one of those training videos known as the 'talking head'? You know the type: one camera on a single speaker for an hour or two. Kind of hard to keep your attention, let alone teach you anything. Are your meetings like that?
The greatest motivator is participation! Encourage and promote everyone to participate actively in a meeting. Also, like my friends at that dealership, use meetings to recognize achievements. Praise before peers offers 10 times more benefits than praise behind closed doors.
In a sales or motivational meeting, incentive is most crucial. Educate with the features, but promote the benefits as incentives since no sale will be made without them.
O = Organization
Excuse my repetitiveness, but that dealership meeting offers a lesson in organization. Going back to the basic guidelines of Appearance, make an agenda and then distribute it in advance to the attendees. The worst meetings are those attended by people who are not prepared because they were given no idea as to the agenda. Such ignorance only results in embarrassment and humiliation-not the greatest incentives.
You've often heard the expression: 'Plan your work and work your plan.' That perhaps is the best wisdom available for a meeting. Without an organized plan to achieve your meeting goals, you've wasted your time. So plan the meeting and meet the plan.
U = Understand
This final note is simple.
Understand what you want to accomplish in the meeting. Understand how the meeting can accomplish it. Then utilize the meeting to pass on that understanding, so that everyone in attendance will also understand.
When it comes to future meetings, think in terms of quality, not quantity of time. Let me leave you with a modern paraphrasing of an old Irish blessing:
May the elevator rise smoothly, Profits rain gently on your revenue, Success embrace your endeavors, And may your achievements be more bountiful than your meetings.