The Most Important Meeting

I worked for an organization that was meeting happy. Monday through Friday, my schedule was filled to the brim with meetings. Operations meetings, managers meetings, supervisors meetings, departmental meetings, one-on-one meetings, security meetings, weekly meetings, monthly meetings, and quarterly meetings. There are meetings to dread, meetings to look forward to; well organized meetings, free-flowing meetings and useless meetings.

As the meeting list grows, all of the meetings begin to blur together and eventually the effectiveness of meetings begins to diminish. MEETING OVERLOAD! It is at that point, that we must take stock of our meetings schedule and determine those meetings that are critical to the success of our organization, and our ability to do our jobs.

Ken Blanchard, the author of "The One Minute Manager" writes, "I'm a One Minute Manager. I call myself that because it takes very little time for me to get big results from people."

Organizations faced with economic challenges will lean toward holding longer, more frequent meetings, in an effort to improve the economic situation. However, this approach is counterintiutive to solving economic situations or working solutions, as sales teams, and staff members are no longer working to grow revenue, but are holed up in a conference room discussin Plans of Action, and strategies. Don't misunderstand, it is important to develop a high quality strategy, but if that strategy includes meeting more, the organization will voluntarily reduce its ability to increase capacity and grow revenue. In other words, if the sales staff is involved in daily sales meetings, that is time taken away from the activity of selling.

Instead of increasing the length and frequency of meetings, leadership must improve the quality of the meetings by developing a laser-like focus on the subject at hand. The sales meeting is not the place to discuss operational issues. Rather, sales meetings are to discuss sales strategies, current prospects and prospecting activities and goals. An effective sales meeting should only require one 30 minute meeting per week, and a 5-minute daily update at the start of the business day.

The Sales Team is the driver of the business. This team is the one team that is required to be on point, every day of the week. They serve as the front-line and the initial contact for customers. In some cases, the sales team will be the only in-person contact your customer will have until the day of the event. The Sales Meeting is the most important meeting that an organization can have, and without question, it must be a well-planned and executed meeting. Time wasted in a sales meeting, will ultimately result in the loss of valuable sales time, and eventually dollars.

For many organizations, the concept of an effective sales meeting (or any other type of meeting for that matter) remains elusive. Begin with a simple sales meeting strategy.

1. Set the Goal(s)
2. Identify Problems
3. Hand out praise

Meetings are important and serve a valuable purpose, however meetings are not more important than the business. Even in the meetings and events industry, meetings play a secondary role to the business itself. Remember that time spent on strategy (in meetings) is time not spent building the business. And the most important meeting, is the meeting that creates more business.

Eric Tompkins
Tompkins Event Consultants