Running Meetings That Don't Suck - IDEAA Framework
A simple framework to drive your meeting content
Earlier I wrote a article on running sales meetings that don’t suck.
Meetings are under pressure and for good reason. Lot’s of them don’t need to happen and we end up spending hours of wasted time and productivity sitting in meetings that don’t add value to our job.
I did a few things level up my meeting game
Created meeting guidelines
Created a framework that each meeting followed
Got serious about my meeting process (prep, facilitation, timing, follow-up)
I shared our general meeting guidelines in a PDF in the last post.
Here is a deeper dive on the IDEAA meeting framework.
IDEAA Meeting Framework
Information - This is to convey information to the team that needs it, changes in policy and why, market updates, company happenings from different departments. Things that can be delivered in person then followed up in a meeting recap. It allows you as the leader to provide the context or the why for the information and relate it to the people in your meeting.
Decisions - There are times where there are outstanding issues to resolve (are we going to sponsor this or that event, how are we going to handle that territory change) - this section allows time for a discussion then a decision.
Education - This is one of my favorites and often the most popular segments of my meetings. It also takes the most effort to prepare for. You can bring in speakers on a specific topic or you can drill down into a component of your process and unpack how your top producers handle it. Have questions on what they want to learn? Ask them - I try and do a survey 2x per year to see what topics they are interested then I prioritize them and schedule them out for the next 6 months.
Acknowledgement - So simple and often overlooked. This can be a quick acknowledgement of achievements for the past week or a simple as a birthday or anniversary. The key is to change the type of acknowledgement up from meeting to meeting so you are not just praising revenue or signing happy birthday every meeting. Find specific things to acknowledge and make sure you can spotlight different members of the team in different meetings.
Accountability - Arguably one of the most important. Working accountability into your meeting agendas on activities or results (I prefer accountability on activities versus results - since I can acknowledge those results and if I need to have private conversations with those that are not hitting their numbers). This is as simple as going around and discussing activities and goals or you can post activity or pipeline information across the team from your CRM. It can but uncomfortable for those who are not doing the work but can have a huge cultural impact and drive your team to be high performing if done well.
The secret here I’ve found it to not make your meetings too formulaic but to vary them a bit. I always make sure I have 3 or 4 of the 5 components of IDEAA but not all 5 every time. Sales people like variability.
To run great meetings or sales meetings that don’t suck - it takes work. Plan at least a hour to prep your sales meetings, gather your data, communicate before hand and follow up! That’s number 3 on the list to level up my meeting game.
Let me know how it goes!