Capstone Sales Development Blog

Posted by Charles Ingram Tuesday, August 18, 2009 @3:35 p.m.

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.” Somewhere, however, 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) there 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.   Many 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 in which 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 himself 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 think this is the one and only opportunity to have input. However, 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. 

Posted by Jim Lee Tuesday, August 4, 2009 @ 9:40 a.m.

Once you’ve agreed upon a Goldilocks objective with your boss (not too aggressive for your tastes, not too lame for your boss’ tastes – it’s just right), how do you go about making that objective come to life? Hopefully you followed the advice of a previous post on this blog (see Setting Objectives, dated 7/6/09), and now you’re ready to put in place what’s needed to ensure success.

Allow me to use a sports analogy here. Even someone with only a cursory knowledge of baseball knows that the objective of the New York Yankees is to be not only the premier franchise in major league baseball, but the premier franchise in all of professional sports. In order to achieve that objective, they set a goal. The only goal that would lead to such a lofty objective is to win world championships. Regardless of how many expensive superstars they sign, how expensive their new ballpark is, or how many headlines their owner generates, if they don’t first win championships, they will never attain their objective. So every February when they report for spring training, they have one goal – to win the World Series.

Once they have their goal in place, they must then develop a strategy to achieve that goal. Their strategy is to sign and/or develop the best players available and surround them with the best coaching and facilities. They must then develop measures which tell them whether they’re successfully implementing their strategy. Their measures include pitching, offensive, and defensive statistics and ultimately wins and losses.

In order to turn your sales objective into reality, you should develop your own OGSM, or
Objective, Goal, Strategy, Measure. Let’s say you sell something truly glamorous for a living, Pampers Disposable Diapers. An objective for your business might be to attain share leadership with your biggest retailer. Once your boss and your customer agree, you now need to determine how to achieve this.

Start with setting goals that lead to accomplishing the objective. You might start by determining a share of the market that would be necessary to overtake the current leading brand. After you confirm that this share is achievable, decide the strategy you intend to employ to hit this share. For example, will you achieve this goal by selling new distribution, more ads, better pricing, or better shelf space? Or, will you pursue all these options? Whose involvement do you need with your customer? What kind of marketing, consumer research, logistical, or other help do you need from within your own company?

Finally, how will you measure your progress? What levels of distribution, advertising, pricing, and shelf space are needed? On what timing do you want accomplish each of these elements? You would also probably measure your success against your share objectives (e.g. get from a 25 to a 27 share within 3 months, from a 27 to a 28 share within six months, from a 28 to a 30 share within nine months, and from a 30 to a 31 share within 12 months).

My experience is that this OGSM process is thorough enough to allow you to critically think through all the steps necessary to accomplish your objectives while being flexible enough to apply to any business opportunity. If it can work for the Yankees, it can work for you as well.