Meeting Agendas can empower you to set and control the purpose of a meeting as well as the agreements reached during the meeting.
Are you tired of meetings that accomplish nothing? These lessons from sales training might help.
Case Study
During lunch, a field sales manager of a major consumer goods company told me about an experience he had had during a day in the field with his company’s chief executive officer. He said that he went through the day will a well-planned series of meetings. Each meeting was important to the success of the company’s brands. And he felt that his day was a success.
However, the CEO showed him how he could have made each meeting more successful by entering the meeting with a prepared agenda. He pointed to instances of the meetings getting off track and failing to obtain commitments that were there for the asking.
Preparation for a Sales Call
In my training at a major consumer products company, I learned how to plan a sales call. The night before, I would create a presentation for each call. The presentation included the objective of the call, the benefits to the buyer, and the quantities of products I planned to sell. Interwoven into the agenda were possible objections I might anticipate from the buyer and how I would handle them.
A Status Board as a Meeting Agenda
When I entered the recruiting industry, I first worked for a search firm that had a former pharmaceutical industry executive as CEO. The only thing that he asked of us recruiters is that we sit down at the beginning of every day and go over a single sheet that contained a list of search assignments and prospects, code the status of the assignments, and update that sheet every day. From there he asked to see a copy of the sheet at the end of every week.
Each morning, we recruiters met to review our “Status Boards,” which were the agenda for the meeting.
In having us create this simple “Status Board,” the CEO established more than a plan. He created an agenda for our daily activity. We not only had to present the names of the hiring companies and the name of the applicants; we had to state our progress in the process. For potential candidates, we put no number after their name. If a candidate agreed to an interview with a company, we put a “1” beside the name of that candidate. When we had a candidate scheduled for an interview, we put a “2” beside the applicant’s name. A “3” meant that the candidate had an offer. A “4” meant the candidate had accepted the offer.
What this CEO accomplished was to require each recruiter to know the details and progress of each search assignment. He called this sheet a “Status Board.” Implicit in this activity is that this CEO laid out the details of an agenda that kept us recruiters on track and kept him informed.
Meeting Agendas Across all Industries.
So began my practice of having an agenda for my daily activities. I add to my agenda as new events arise. Again, this agenda is more detailed than scheduling a task. The agenda contains the objective, progress, and completion of the task.
A second example, is how I manage visit to the doctor’s office. I state the purpose of the visit. Then I add a list of questions I plan to ask. I include a section for next steps. This simple method makes my appointments more meaningful, and I don’t leave the meeting with regrets for not asking the right questions or frustration on over not understanding the next steps. Therefore, I can then take the steps for more successful action for my health.
