|
 RSS Feed
Virtual meetings (or teleconferences) have become a high tech way to waste real time.
True, people can attend without the cost of travel. But sometimes these virtual meetings are attended by virtual participants (i.e., people who are functionally absent because they're surfing the net, playing games, or reading e-mail).
As a result, nothing useful happens. And when people waste their time, they waste the human resource that makes money for a business.
Here's how to hold an effective teleconference.
1) Plan a simple meeting.
Choose tasks that can be accomplished during a telephone call. This includes simple decisions, brief news updates, and easy solutions.
Since the meeting is being held by phone, it is impossible to resolve complex issues. These require direct human interaction, sophisticated group activities, and significant time.
Start by writing the goal for the meeting. Then challenge if this goal can be realistically accomplished in a virtual meeting. If not, you will need to hold a regular meeting.
Also check if there is any other way to accomplish the goal. Many simple issues can be resolved by e-mail or a phone call to one person.
Then write an agenda that describes each action your group will take to accomplish the goal. In general, you would use simple versions of the process tools that I teach in my workshop on effective meetings.
Note: talking about an issue is the least effective group process. Discussion favors quick talkers, neglects reflective participants, and becomes easily sidetracked.
Of course, we know that every meeting must have a goal and an agenda. This is even more important for a virtual meeting. Otherwise it becomes a journey without a map -- in the dark.
2) Plan a small meeting.
Invite only those who can directly contribute to the meeting. Ideally, this should be eight or fewer people. If you invite more, some of the attendees will become lost as silent listeners, which is a waste of their time.
For example, people have told me about four-hour teleconferences that were held with 50 people. Only a few talked while the rest just held a phone against their ear. (Actually, it's comic that anyone would think such a meeting might work.)
3) Plan a short meeting.
The meeting should last less than 30 to 45 minutes. People are unable to concentrate on long phone calls. They become tired. Their attention drifts. They need to take a break.
During long teleconferences (e.g., over an hour) the attendees will put the phone down to take breaks. This is bad because those who are talking think that everyone is hearing what they're saying, when in fact, only a few may be there.
4) Tell others.
Distribute the agenda at least a day before the meeting. This allows everyone to think about the issues and prepare their participation. If appropriate, call key participants to confirm that they received the agenda and to check if they have comments on how the meeting could be made more effective. Use this as an opportunity to listen, instead of work on issues or argue.
5) Help others.
Distribute any materials related to the issues before the meeting. This includes outlines, blueprints, schematics, product brochures, and data. Then, the participants can use these tools to participate more effectively. For example, they can follow an outline, look at diagrams, or read data during the meeting.
6) Use a facilitator.
This person can direct the meeting process, make sure everyone contributes, and keep everyone focused on the issue. The facilitator can also serve as a scribe by taking notes and then broadcasting them by instant messenger or e-mail during the call.
Note: a virtual meeting is more than just a phone call. It is a business activity that must add value to your business.
I am frequently asked "How can I motivate my Sales Reps?" Companies jump through hoops coming up with contests and SPIFs that will encourage the behavior they are looking for. In actuality, the answer is right at the end of their nose...be a mentor!
Role models are few and far between in both our personal and professional lives. Your best reps are those that want to get better. Providing them with a mentor who understands and communicates best practices will not only get them up to speed but will also provide them with a sounding board, a coach and a person they know has their best interests in mind. You must communicate with each rep and find out what it is that excites them. The biggest mistake that we make as leaders is assuming that each rep is motivated by money.
Make the most of nonfinancial motivators. Employees like to be recognized for good work, and to feel that their supervisors listen to and act to solve problems. It's also important to make your employees feel as though they're part of a team. Talk to them. Find out what actually gets each one of them out of bed each day. (Remember every person is different and has their own W.I.I.F.M.-whats in it for me). To one it might be weekly honor roll for the top performer, another might wat time with their significant other so a dinner for two at a nice restaurant, and another might want time with the family so an extra day off - can go a long way toward retaining the best sales people.
We live hectic professional lives. But, if the last quality time you spent with your reps was to do a forecast review, then are you really giving them the best you have to offer? Do you really know that Mike dislikes Monday morning sales meetings and that his numbers would drastically improve if you were to suggest that if he were 110% of target he could miss the meeting. Are you aware that Sally wants to be recognized as consitantly making the most dials to decision makers?
As for mentoring, almost every team has top performers that want to do more...that want to help others be successful. Set up a program that allows them to do so and reward them for it. There is joy in mentoring...you just have to identify those people who will feel it and give them an opportunity to do so.
Remember that companies can live and die by the quality of their salesforce. A dazzling sales team can generate tremendous sales for an average product or service, but a clumsy sales team might not be able to do much with even a first-rate offering.
In US businesses today, depending on where you are (geographically) the market may vary somewhere between soft and excruciating. Among the areas this difficulty impacts is Personnel: who to keep, who and whether to hire, what to look for, etc. If you have read other posts here, you know that we are raving fans of objective, measurable tools for any effective recruiting program. But, here’s another truth that seems to become clearer each day, “Companies hire for competency and fire for Character.”
If you are dubious, make a quick mental inventory of those you have hired in the last several years. Is there anything FORMAL in your interviewing and hiring process which is targeted at understanding and uncovering the character of the individual? If there is, how integral to the process is it? Now think of those who have been let go for any reason other than getting out of a certain business, line, or geographic area. What made you choose which to keep, which to redeploy, retrain, etc.?
The next thing to review is even where you find exceptions (terminating/retaining based on competency), there is a fine line between competencies in the open, and those inexorably tied to specific, identifiable traits such as dependability, flexibility, attentiveness, diligence, and the like.
How can a company take this truth and make it useful?
ü Work character into your existing corporate culture. Make sure that managers know what is being sought in employees—specifically. Understand what the traits mean and what they look like on display.
ü Consider drawing it into your job descriptions—formally. Use character words like enthusiasm and boldness in describing the sales profile for success. Use alertness and responsibility in describing the ideal accounting department.
ü Praise and correct based on the underlying character qualities on display. You’ll find it has a greater and longer lasting effect on performance than praising or correcting based on the outward achievement (or lack of) which result.
This penny has dropped for our organization in the last year and we are very much a work in progress, still. There are organizations much farther along in effectively recognizing character but all of them, that I am aware of, began by making a commitment to elevate the importance of character in everything they do.
Does your organization have a character focus, already? Do the newest people understand the importance of character in their job performance? Are those tasked with interviewing and hiring looking for signs of positive character qualities in their candidate matrices?
A woman we’ll call "Debra" who sells business services had a recurring “sales pain” that an informal poll of other salespeople confirms is a widely experienced problem.
Debra suffers from anxiety attacks every time she turns in a deal.
Why? Because about 25% of the time, the new “client” calls her the next day (but usually not during working hours) and leaves a voice mail backing out. Typically, they would say that they had had second thoughts and decided not to keep their commitment.
Her prospects were experiencing a psychological aftereffect in the buying process known as “remorse”. Debra is trained that when she gets the order, she is supposed to exit stage left. The theory being that if she stayed, the buyer might have second thoughts and she would lose the sale. Typically, the buyer felt that Debra's quick exit sent the message that “I just made a mistake”. Combined with some unresolved concerns, prospects became uncomfortable enough to back out.
Prescription:
Give the prospective client their God-given right to say "No". Although considered career suicide, this freedom will give you an opportunity to save the sale when a buyer is on the fence. Try saying something like this:
“I really appreciate your business and look forward to working with you. Before I leave, however, are you sure you’re comfortable with what we’ve discussed? If there’s anything that you’re not sure about, this would be a good time to discuss it.”
Most of the time the buyer will reinforce her decision to do business with you. If she does bring up an issue, you will be there to deal with it. Avoid buyer's remorse and your anxiety attacks!
Comments (1 )
Ever dealt with a prospect who, you discover, doesn’t make the final decision? If you manage sales people, this is likely something that fries your bacon on a regular basis. Part of what makes this difficult for a sales manager is that it is easy to answer a salesperson who finds him/herself in this situation glibly and say, “You should stop the sales call until the higher authority is available.”
That is optimum and salespeople should be careful not to artificially empower the contact who “can only say no (not yes).” With that said, successful sales is often about finding the best business case among several less than optimum choices.
If your contact is standing between you and the higher authority you have five options:
1. Politely withdraw
“Please don’t take this the wrong way. But nine out of ten times when I am not the one making the presentation, I don’t make the sale. I’m sure it’s my fault, but I don’t want to waste your time or mine. So it sounds like it’s over...”
2. Artificial Decision Making
Treat your contact like they are the decision maker and proceed. The goal is to get them to drink your kool-aid and become your inside sales person.
3. Technical Consultant
Ask permission to be available to your contact as a technical consultant. You promise not to go into sell mode, but you are available when the money person asks questions they can’t answer.
4. Rehearsal
Brief your contact on presenting your product/service. Have them feed back to you how they are going to answer a variety of questions. Hopefully they will realize its better to bring you. If not, then at least they are prepared.
5. Put it in Their world
This is “salesperson empathy.” If they were in your shoes, how would they handle this? Keep it business, not personal.
As a manager you now have a teachable moment to explore which option(s) might be available to your salesperson and a cost-benefit analysis for any option which might apply.
As with nearly everything in sales, staying away from the highest swings of the pendulum—in this case, chasing business no matter the tenuous connection to the real authority, or walking away from anything which requires even the slightest outside-the-box thinking—is the advisable strategy.
Comments (1 )
Effective Meetings—In Brief
Many managers have complained to me that they go into meetings with the best intentions to make them concise and “impactful” but somewhere the control of the meeting is wrested from them and it is only in the autopsy that they can identify what happened.
If this has happened to you, know that it is all in the ground rules. One of the things which every sales organization should have up on the wall or over the doorway or wherever their memorizers are put:
“You can’t get mad at someone for doing something you didn’t say they couldn’t do.”
In a nutshell, there were no established, agreed upon rules to the meeting you were holding. Here are some ground rules someone shared with me that I like for any internal meeting (these are the ones that tend to get away from you easiest) at your organization.
1. New information only. Lots of times we want to put our two cents in to restate something that someone else has said because we think we can put it more clearly. The net effect tends to be circuitous conversations where someone else feels compelled to restate the objection for the same cause -- clarity.
2. No personal attacks. Meetings are never the right place to settle scores or even to “zing” someone who has opened him/herself to direct criticism. There is no faster way to undo organizational trust than to have old mistakes replayed to paint someone’s new idea as unworthy because of “the source.”
3. Silence is consent. It may seem like this one would extend your meetings interminably because participants would feel like this is the one and only opportunity to have input. But, what it does in practice is “close the compartments” (picture the doors between compartments of a submarine) on each meeting that you hold and keep one meeting from bleeding itinerary points into the next.
These rules have the added benefit of being content neutral, i.e. it doesn’t matter what type of meeting you are having. Just make sure that the rules are clearly communicated and understood in advance by everyone involved and bought into by the highest level of your organization represented in any meeting.
Comments (0 )
There are times when you just shouldn’t start a sales training program. Sounds kind of counter-productive for me to say that, doesn’t it?
In talking to prospective clients, I’m always struck by the things that scare them and the things that don’t. Many of those who’ve called us have done so because someone they know has said, “Capstone did this great training program for our sales team and now our team is pursuing new business more purposefully, methodically, and with an increased energy…”
So the discussion starts with some variant of “I want what they got.”
Then follows my explanation that the reason sales training worked so well is that it was the “outgrowth” of a thorough process where we first evaluated the People, Systems, and Strategies of that other company. I tell the prospect that we’d be happy to begin that process with him as well. If in that process we find that a training program for his front-line sales people would be beneficial, we’ll get it started right away.
In far too many instances, you’d have thought we killed his dog. The CEO then counters with variations of: “Can’t you just take my word that we need training? I already know we have great people; they just need some new tricks they can use in the field.” Or “I’m sure it’s not a management problem. The manager we have now was the best salesperson this company ever had.”
This type of resistance makes me wonder: Why would a company trust us to use a scalpel on the sales team but not a stethoscope?
Even in exploratory surgery, there is some plan being followed. Hours of research and diagnostic time are spent. The surgeon doesn’t just start cutting and hope he finds what’s ailing you.
In the case of an underperforming sales organization, a good training program can be an important step on the road to improvement, but think of the issues it can’t address:
·Poor communication of the overall vision
·Misalignment of the executive and management strategies
·Misunderstood company priorities
·Ineffective sales management
·Sales people who are not trainable
Sales training without an understanding of what ails your organization will at best be inefficient and at worst ineffective. You work too hard for your capital to have those as the only options.
If your surgeon says to you “I don’t know what’s wrong with you; let me try some surgery and we’ll see how you feel afterwards,” -- don’t let him get near you with a scalpel!
So, what do you think? Do you agree that using a stethoscope to diagnose your sales organization is the right first step to improving your sales team? Or would you go for the scalpel first and hope the training works?
Comments (1 )
Throw out your current Organization Chart! Not because the people are the wrong ones or because it is too steep (layers of management) or too flat (barely concealed chaos). But, because it has built into it a mindset that works against your company’s best long-term interest.
I believe this is applicable to every sales organization we work with and that it is more broadly true for all types of businesses. Instead of the “Great Pyramid” model of an organization where there is a descending order of “do this for me!” -- the better model is a funnel with the tube snipped off. Or, a top - while spinning; not laying on its side. (OK so I haven’t worked out the picture for it yet, but you know what it looks like.)
Here the mantra is: “What can I do for you?” The “top” (now “foundational”) executives see their job as supporting and, yes, serving the group of people in the next level “up” throughout the organization.
So how does this better serve the company’s interests? Think about where your customers and clients are in the traditional org chart. Who in your organization has the most interaction with them? It is the salespeople, customer service, technical support, service providers, delivery, etc. If these people are at the bottom of an organization, your clients and customers can’t help but feel like the “trod upon.”
But in the funnel/spinning top model where each layer of management supports and serves the next, there is no disconnect in asking people to treat clients and customers not as an interruption from what they are doing for their “superiors” but as the very reason for the business’s being.
Is your company a “top down” organization? Do your customers/clients feel like they are at the top or the bottom in your organization?
Comments (1 )
Spending most of my time for the last 12 years in Southern Florida, I have had the unusual experience of seeing the world of baseball from a great “behind the Wizard’s curtain” angle. Our family is 10 minutes from 2 different spring training facilities and within 2 hours drive of 4 others. Then there are the “Grapefruit League” minors toiling the summers away.
I’ve had the opportunity to talk with club personnel about the art and science of selecting “A” players for the “big show.” Watching games it is often difficult for the layman to distinguish a very good technical player from the rare rough gem who is destined for greatness. So, I made the mistake of assuming that the talent scouts make lots of “my gut tells me” decisions. When the question came up at a community forum where a representative of the Minnesota Twins organization was speaking, he said as diplomatically as he could,
“Don’t be an idiot. -- Certainly it’s difficult to know for sure who will be great. But, which of you wouldn’t weather considerable difficulty not to be the person in your organization to make a Million Dollar mistake?”
Are you facing the difficulty in your sales organization of not knowing for sure who will be “great?”
I talk with CEOs and Presidents of all varieties of sales organizations who make sales hiring decisions based solely on “gut” decisions. They are putting their company’s revenue futures on the line based upon a “feeling” rather than using any quantitative data. Some admit they knowingly hire 3 sales people for every one they hope to be a “keeper.”
Considering the cost of your time and resources in the hiring process, training and ramp-up, the opportunity cost of real prospects not identified and closeable sales lost to ineptitude, how many of these bad hires would it take until you have made the Million Dollar mistake?
So, how do you avoid making bad sales hires?
- Have a system. A properly built system lets you test and measure results. Tracking the results of changes you make within the hiring process allows you to hone the outcome for each step. Ultimately that gives you more flexibility, not less.
- Frontload the system with unemotional measures. The Twins representative said they know the data for more than 15 statistical categories before anyone “gets a look.” At Capstone our clients rely heavily on a pre-hire screening tool licensed by Objective Management Group called Express Screens. We build the system around this tool to ensure the best chance of identifying who can and will be successful selling in their organization. Our clients have objective and quantifiable data to use in the sales hiring process.
- Put your gut where it belongs. Instead of using your gut to decide who to let into the sales hiring funnel, use it as the last filter for what comes out the bottom.
- Trust the system. Now that you have an objective system for identifying, qualifying, interviewing, and hiring “A” players - trust it! Don’t do an end-run around it at every opportunity. Follow the system, track the results and prove its effectiveness.
When hiring sales people, expect more - and believe that you can get it. Don’t let fear keep you from making a change to your current sales hiring practices and from finding those “A” players for your company. Do you have ideas on how to hire the right people? Let us know.
Charlie Ingram
Comments (3 )
|