Each year as we approach the fourth quarter, companies frantically start planning a few types of events: 1) Sales kick-off meetings, 2) Channel conferences; or 3) Top performer club trips (often called President’s Club Trips). I am honored to play a role in each of these types of events. I often get asked “How can we ensure our sales meeting is successful?” Here are some tips to ensure that your investment produces results instead of feeling like a waste of money.
- Define Success: If you just want to entertain the audience, then hire a magician not a speaker. Think about what causes the greatest frustration in your business. For example, it might be that your sales people are not speaking with the right people. Or it might be that every deal comes down to price. Your challenge might have to do with customer service, or content marketing. Regardless of the topic, each speaker should have an area of expertise, and should also know where they are not a fit.
- Identify the Expert: We are renovating our home. My wife and I know what we wanted to change about our home. However, we both recognize that we are not the experts on the best way to design and build the rooms to achieve those goals. Similarly, although you are certainly the expert on the challenges that your team is facing, your speaker should be the expert at how to solve those challenges.
- Engage Your Team Early: For every speaking engagement I conduct, no matter how large or how small the audience, I design a survey to collect input from attendees about their challenges and goals. This allows me to tailor the session to the audience. It also provides a valuable resource for the organization’s leadership. Often, the participants will raise an obstacle that leadership had not previously identified. The survey also raises plenty of “excuses” that, as a speaker, I am able to address (isn’t it amazing that low-performing reps need more marketing material, whereas the top performers never seem to need any of it?).
- Define the Next Steps: Our son is taking percussion lessons (yes – it’s loud in our house). At the end of each lesson, the instructor gives him specific instructions about the practice he should be doing to reinforce the skills he just learned. The same holds true for your team. Whatever skills your team learned at the recent sales conference, be sure that they are left with actionable steps to practice what they learned. If my son does not practice, rest assured that a month from now, he will be back where he started. Similarly, if your team does not have a plan to practice what they were taught, then they’ll revert to their old habits. If you didn’t want to change their old habits, you would not invest in a speaker to change their behavior.
- Hold People Accountable: The greatest single failure I see is that people do not have a method for holding their team accountable. Each time I deliver a workshop for a company, I work with the management team to schedule a follow-up session roughly 45 days after the initial program. We make it clear to the participants that we’ll be holding a follow-up conference call or video conference with everyone. During the follow-up session, it’s key to ask your team what is and is not working for them. I always point out that if you are silent on the follow-up call, it is usually an indicator that you have not put in the time to implement or practice what you learned, and have wasted the organization’s investment. This applies to top performers, managers, or channel partners.
- Measure Results: If you defined success up front, why wouldn’t you measure the results to see if you achieved that outcome? If you expected certain changes in behavior, then six months out, see what is and is not working so you can make adjustments to reach your goal.
Yes, a good speaker should entertain the audience. If you solely want your audience to be entertained, then hire a magician or a juggler instead of a speaker. The best speakers can capably engage, educate, and inspire your audience to take action. If you want to achieve tangible results, then follow the guidance above and your meetings will be setup for extraordinary success.
Should You Hire a Magician, Juggler, or Speaker for Your Next Event?
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