Let's face facts: Your next sales meeting can have a profound effect on your career. If it's a winner and the participants
leave happy, enthused, educated and ready to be more productive, you look good and your judgement is appreciated by your top
management and peers. If, on the other hand, your sales team leaves the meeting looking like they're going to a hanging. If
they put "lunch" on the critique as the best part of the meeting, you are unlikely to be viewed as one who can get things done
in sterling fashion.
Here are some factors guaranteed to give you a lousy meeting and commensurate benefits to your reputation and
career.
- UNCLEAR OBJECTIVES FOR THE MEETING. "Why are we having a meeting anyhow? To sell more product? To sell
the same amount at a higher price? To educate about a new product line? To reward some people for a job well-done?
To improve customer service? Who cares? It's that time of year again and we have to have a sales meeting. Besides, if
we don't have objectives, how can we miss them? We won't have to draw up one of those pesky agendas."
- INAPPROPRIATE VENUE. When you mention "convention," many managers think of Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe,
Atlantic City or Hawaii. If you're looking strictly for a reward for a job well done, those places are fine, but don't
expect to get a lot of work done. If you try to keep your folks locked in a meeting room in paradise, they'll hate you
for it, or like you very much and just skip your business meetings.
- ROOM DOESN'T FIT THE AUDIENCE. Put 100 people in a room designed for 700 and they feel lost. Voices
sound
small and thin and drift away into the atmosphere. Some folks try to make up for it by filling it with chairs, but that
makes it worse. People sit as far away from one another as is humanly possible and there is no chance of group synergy
or enthusiasm. Asking people to move to the front only exacerbates the condition. People then feel they are being
controlled and wonder where all the other people (the ones with good sense) are. Too many people in a room is
uncomfortable, but too few is death.
- BAD ROOM SET-UP. Rooms with ceilings too high, or too low. Too dark, or with huge picture windows
overlooking the beach. Sound systems that squawk and squeal, when they work at all. Temperature too hot, especially
after lunch. A theater style set-up (no tables) for meetings exceeding ninety minutes. Amateur speakers often think
they can overcome a bad room with excellent content and delivery, but that's not the way the smart money bets.
- START LATE. When we start late, we train the people who come late that it's perfectly okay to do so and
that we will wait for them. We further train the people who arrived punctually, that it is a waste of time to do so, as
we will wait for the late-comers. If you start late, you'll have to end late, which starts your next session late, ad
infinitum. At a national sales meeting for a national moving company, I preceded Don Hutson, a fine speaker who was
scheduled to present at 2:30. He finally got on at 4:15, just after the MC announced the commencement of the cocktail hour.
He worked to an audience of six, including me and his spouse equivalent. What a waste of time, talent and money.
One fine manager gives script to everyone who gets to the meeting by the accepted time. Those tardy don't get script.
Periodically employees get to convert the script to valuable prizes. A variation on this allows for an auction of the prizes
using only script. If you're late, you don't get to play. The more often you are punctual, the more script you have to play
with.
- GET A CHEAP MC. Or, better yet, let the President's brother (an amateur comedian)
do it. He's free and will appreciate the face time. He can tell the audience to hold all questions until the completion of the
presentation, which will poison any interactivity the following speakers may try to create. He will probably start with
a long joke, which invariably bombs, and then lead into fifteen minutes of "housekeeping" announcements. By the time he
turns the lectern over the the first speaker, those still awake in the audience will be exploring methods of
self-destruction. He can also entertain both the speaker and audience by coming up with announcements about "the white
Buick in the parking lot with the lights on," during the presentation. A really experienced meeting-killer will also
mispronounce most of the speaker's names.
- TURN OFF THE LIGHTS. This allegedly focuses audience attention on the speaker, but in reality hides the
audience from his view. With no audience feedback, the speaker has no need to adjust his presentation to their
response, as there will be no response. Combine the dark room with a temperature of seventy-five degrees, or more, and
your audience will get a well deserved nap.
- TREAT YOUR AUDIENCE TO THE LEAPING LASER LIGHT ARROW. Modern technology has brought us the wonder of
using an amplified light beam to create a brightly lit arrow that can be used to point up salient features on
overhead transparencies and 35 mm slides from some distance, as example cowering behind the lectern. The inventors
of this wondrous device seem to have overlooked the fact that amplification also includes the movement of the hand
holding the pointer. At a speech a few years ago, the speaker seemed to have had a couple of drinks at lunch (or
should have had), as his hand shook most alarmingly. Doubtless a slight tremor at the point of origin, the light
amplification caused the arrow to dart about the screen in huge, jerky bounds. He really tried to control it, as
this unwarranted movement upset him even more that it did the audience. In the dim twilight of the darkened room,
I could see him frantically grasping the errant device while it yanked him around like a very large dog on a very
long leash.
- DO NOT HAVE AUDIENCE INVOLVEMENT. "Who needs that, anyhow? We didn't call this meeting to hear them talk.
We called this meeting so we could talk to them and tell them what we want them to know and to do. We'll stand up, show
them reams of overhead projector foils, with long columns of small numbers. When they start to nod, we'll hit 'em with
an hour-long Power Point presentation with the lights off and the sound up to ear-bleed level."
- ASK THE AUDIENCE TO HOLD THEIR QUESTIONS FOR A "Q AND A" PERIOD AT THE END. This will doubtless make
attendees feel like children and rankle under the close control. Besides, if you have a question, do you hear much else
until it gets answered?
- LEAVE THE OVERHEAD PROJECTOR ON WHILE YOU SPEAK. I've always had trouble understanding this one; a
speaker mounts the platform, turns on the overhead projector and then leaves it on for the whole presentation while
never placing a foil thereon. Never mind the fact that the speaker is blinded each time he walks in front of the light,
the baffled audience is wondering when they are going to get something to look at and paying no attention whatever to
the speaker. Visual aids are your competition for attention and should be hidden when not actively in use.
- OPEN WITH "A FUNNY THING HAPPENED . . ." A long story is a heavy time investment and, if it bombs (and
the odds indicate that it will), it will take a long time to dig out, if you ever do. Long jokes, phony personal
experiences and name dropping are as certain paths to the dumper as I know of.
- ELIMINATE HOOPLA. Balloons, crepe paper and marching bands are for meeting's with no substance. This
here's a SERIOUS meeting, so it's natural that people would be hanging around outside the room with long faces and
subdued tones, entering only after all other options have exhausted themselves.
- POUR BOOZE WITH A SLOW WRIST. I recall flying across this great country of ours to West Palm Beach at the
Sheraton PGA for a meeting with television sales executives. There was a cocktail hour from 6 to 7, then dinner, and I
was to speak at 8:30. In actuality, the bar was open until about 9:15, dinner had bottles of wine on every table and I
finally got up to speak about 10:30. One of the first things that became evident was that the people in the back of the
room were having a food fight. I spoke for about 20 minutes, rather than the 50 minutes for which I had been hired.
When I sat down, no one noticed I had shortened the speech. The program chairman later told me that I shouldn't feel
too bad, as his group had never had a speaker they had liked. "A speaker they remembered" would have been more like it.
By and large, after-dinner speakers are a waste of time and money. You want to teach 'em something, do it during normal
business hours.
This list is by no means complete, but I hope you'll agree that there's enough material here to sink almost any
well-intentioned, if ineffectively planned meeting. We'll be adding and changing this page in the future and ask you to
join us with your horror stories for our mutual benefit. Just e-mail them to me at trisler@nobullselling.com
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