Archive for July, 2007

Just one thing more to be decided-Now that the meeting is over, was it worth while? Every meeting should be evaluated soon after it’s over for several reasons. First, a meeting that seemed to be successful actually may have been a failure. For instance, the meeting may have been entertaining but not productive of better or greater sales effort.

“It’s easy to be fooled,” said a New England shipping executive. “We have some good showmen in our outfit. The meetings have always been entertaining. But, one day we faced ourselves with an honest evaluation of the meetings. Surprisingly enough, we had to admit they had little value.”

A west coast lumber dealer reported a similar experience. “We finally started evaluating our meetings. We learned that many had not been necessary. A lot of man hours had been wasted. We’d conducted a meeting each Monday simply because Monday was our meeting day! Since then we’ve had only about half as many meetings.”
Look back to determine what your meeting accomplished. It will help you in planning future meetings.

How to obtain the evaluation report

In some organizations, every person attending the meeting is asked to evaluate it. “We want the opinion of the salesman. Our meetings are strictly for him.” This pointed statement was made by the manager of an electronics firm. He obtains an evaluation report from every person in attendance. Other companies get opinions from supervisory personnel only. The feeling here is that the salesman has no right to evaluate anything management does, including the manner in which it conducts sales meetings. “When the salesmen run the company, there’s no need for me/’ declared a sales manager.

Only you can decide which persons are privileged to evaluate your meetings. It is recommended, however, that the rank and file be asked for opinions at least once in a while.