Dick Harlow and I had gone our separate ways by the time I became a General Sales Manager.  When I found myself in his town on a sales trip, I looked him up. 

"My sales meetings just aren't as good as the ones you used to run when I was an Account Manager," I explained to Dick over the phone.  "Would you have some time after work to give me some ideas about making them more effective?"

Dick had been looking forward to trying out a nearby, upscale sports bar and asked me to meet him there after work.

I found the place easily enough, parked the rental and walked under a neon sign at the entrance that identified the joint as October Moon.  Dick was sitting at the bar facing a magnificent mural of a full, orange moon rising over a rolling field of wheat.  He turned as I came in and waved me over.  We exchanged "How are you's" and "You're looking goods" and "it's been too longs" after a hearty handshake and man-hug.

Dick's bottle of beer and icy mug had arrived just as we were finishing our re-introduction.  The waitress asked Dick if he wanted her to pour his beer.  He did not.  She asked me about my choice of beverage and I ordered an Amstel.

"I know you wanted to talk about sales meetings," Dick said as he lifted his bottle.  "But, first I've got a joke for you."

I had positioned myself to the right hand side of Dick because of his left-handedness.  I watched him turn his bottle nearly completely upside down.  The beer splashed about playfully at the bottom of the mug - creating a massive foam head within seconds.  From her vantage point at the far end of the bar, the waitress looked alarmed.  Me?  I was non-plussed.  A long time ago, Dick had told me that pouring a bottle of beer slowly into a mug to create a small head simply meant that he would be drinking a lot of gas.  He theorized that letting some of the gas escape before he drank the beer made more sense.

"Okay, what's your joke?" I asked as the waitress set down my beer, a mug and a bowl of unshelled peanuts.

"A man walks into a bar and sits down.  He notices that the place is empty except for him and the bartender.  The barkeep comes over and slides a bowl of nuts in front of him as he asks what the guy is drinking.  The customer says he'll take a beer and a shot.  The bartender draws a beer into a tall glass and then fills a jigger with whiskey and delivers both to the customer."

Dick was smiling as he told the joke which made me smile in anticipation of the punchline.  So, we're sitting there grinning like idiots at each other as he continues:

"The man sips his whiskey and then he hears, 'Hey, nice haircut'.  He looks around as he hadn't seen anyone come in to the place.  He was ready to dismiss the incident as nothing when he hears, 'I like that shirt you're wearing'.  There is still no one other than him and the bartender.  He calls out to the bartender, 'Did you say something?'  The bartender looks up from the newspaper he is reading and shakes his head 'no'.  The customer looks around the pub a little more carefully and is now 100% sure that he is the only customer.  But, he was certain that he had heard a voice.  As he took a long pull from his beer he hears, 'Beautiful cuff links.'  The customer slams his beer down on the bar and says loudly to the bartender, 'You must have heard that voice!  I am not going crazy.'  The bartender comes over and says, 'What' kinds of things are these voices saying?'  The customer says, 'I heard a voice say 'nice haircut' and 'beautiful cuff links'. 

'Oh, that,' said the bartender.  That's coming from the peanuts. . .

. . . they're complimentary.'

I laughed appreciatively.  Dick always did have a way of making get togethers feel natural and easy - whether it was just the two of us or a roomful of twenty.

"That wasn't just a joke, it was your first lesson," Dick said after sipping his beer.

"What was?  Start my meetings with a joke?" I asked.

"Not necessarily," Dick continued.  "You see, during any interaction between two opposing sides there is a tension that interfers with learning.  We see it between buyers and sellers and it exists between managers and sales people, too."

I nodded.  Dick and I had discussed the tension between buyers and sellers before.  Buyers view sellers with suspicion because sellers have an agenda that doesn't always sinc up with a buyer's needs.  I hadn't really thought that sales people view managers in that way but once Dick pointed it out I began to realize that in the case of a sales meeting, the seller was the sales manager and the buyers were the sales people.

"So, in a sales meeting, it's important to remind the sales people that the sales manager is one of them and they're all on the same team?" I asked.

"Correct.  Now, if you're not very good at telling jokes then a joke at the beginning of a sales meeting might increase suspicion instead of eroding it.  You have to take into account your own personal style when coming up with a device to lighten the mood and reduce the natural tension," Dick explained.  "What could you try?"

"I've always thought it would be fun to start the meetings out with some music.  People filing in silently and filling the chairs always seems like the witnessing an execution.  Maybe if we had some music playing as they walked in the door their energy would increase."

"That's a good one!  What else do you think would reduce tension and get the sellers to view the sales manager with less suspicion?"

"What if the sales manager wasn't in the front of the room?  Maybe I could be sitting down in the middle of the table?"

"Now you're getting the idea," Dick encouraged enthusiastically.  "Okay, so Step #1 to better meetings is to find ways to reduce the tension and natural suspicion that occurs between sales managers and sales people.  Let's talk about the other steps to an effective sales meeting."

While we sat there that night drinking beer and eating peanuts, Dick outlined some of the other steps to effective sales meetings.  In no particular order they were:

Make sure that the messages are relevant to the group.  Meetings die when those attending don't believe the meeting is about them.  If the sales manager needs to lecture an individual he should do it during a one-on-one meeting. 

Be a little vulnerable.  Dick was a great fan of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  He pointed out that the audience loved Johnny even more when he laughed at himself.  Nowhere was this more evident than when Jim Fowler, the zoologist, would bring animals onto the show and let them interact with Johnny.  Vulnerability, if it's not maudlin, can be very endearing and sales managers do well to show their humanity once in a while.

Have benchmark moments like on a TV show.  One of the classic moments of every Seinfeld Show was when Kramer came bursting through Jerry's door with his trademark sliding stumble.  The audience knew it would be a part of every show and despite its predictability it was familiar, fun and something to anticipate.  Dick believed that sales meetings should be more like sales shows where benchmark moments became something to anticipate and enjoy.  Some of his ideas included:  Wins of the Week - in which sellers would describe some of their best victories.  Amazing but True - stories of the absurd requests made by customers and prospects.  Heroes Among Us - opportunities for sellers to tell each other about how a support person in one of the other departments had come to their rescue. 

Make meetings interactive.  The energy level of someone sitting still is low and continues to drop every second they remain stationary.  Dick was a big believer in getting help when it came to distributing memos around the room; rearranging the room to make a presentation; asking questions to get folks talking; or doing quick role playing instead of just delivering a lecture.  In other words, anything to keep the sellers engaged in the meeting.  Dick reminded of a meeting in which he started it by asking if anyone had a $10 bill in exchange for the $20 he was holding.  After a moment of confusion, all of us scrambled for our wallets.  You can bet that we all paid attention to everything Dick said for the rest of that meeting just in case there was another opportunity to make money.

Drive home your message with a dramatic moment.  The best example of this came when Dick was fed up with the sales team for entering orders into the system for which there wasn't a corresponding signed contract.  Instead of just getting angry and threatening us with horrible consequences for future lapses, Dick did something amazing.  He explained the critical importance of having a signed document for every order to ensure that our company could withstand an audit.  He related the relevance to us by reminding us that signed contracts reduced the number of disputes with customers and, consequently, the number of writeoffs that reduced commissions.  Finally, to encourage all of us to make sure that customers agreed in writing to every order he pulled out twelve Mont Blanc pens and handed one to each member of the sales team.  The deal was that we would carry the pens with us on every sales call and have our customers sign their agreements with our special pens.  The moment was pure magic and it was pure Dick Harlow.

These were the elements of effective sales meetings we came up with that night.  But, the list isn't meant to be comprehensive.  Write a comment and share some of the techniques you've developed or seen used to make sales meetings more effective.