Meaningful Meetings

Sales meetings can cover a lot of ground, from serious learning to celebrations of success. But when meetings become ho-hum rounds of routine speeches, it’s time to stir up the pot. Meetings are designed to cover everything from sharing information to training in new sales techniques and product information, so where you hold your next event and why you hold it are inextricably bound together.

Since the tools and facilities available for holding powerful sales meetings are improving all the time, here is a quick look at some of the resources available and what the experts say about using them to your best advantage.

The producers
“We’re called in to help with the tough meetings,” jokes Ralph Murnyak, president of Image Base, which has been producing speeches, graphics and other presentations for sales meetings for 15 years. “Say, you have a tough message to communicate and they don’t want to hear it,” Murnyak explains. “It could be an acquisition, where the sales force will be cut. It could be a shift in the compensation plan. It might be a geographical restructuring. Or it could be another flip-flop from a field organization to a headquarters-oriented organization.”

For tough meetings, Murnyak urges management to sugarcoat the food, not the message. “You must make the message honest and clear: make sure everyone understands and don’t try to mask the bad news,” he says.

His general meeting rule is simple: “The crux of all meetings is balancing entertainment with information.” Image Base works with companies on both aspects of their meetings.The tools available to producers like Image Base are expanding dramatically. “We can now do video recording during the meeting,” Murnyak notes. “Then we can show a wrap-up video presentation at the end of the meeting to summarize everything important that has been said.” The wrap-up is popular with meeting attendees. “They like to see themselves on screen – it’s still magic,” Murnyak says. And it serves an essential business purpose. “It’s the old rule, tell ’em what you are going to say, say it, and tell ’em what you said,” Murnyak emphasizes. “And you can show the video to people who did not attend the meeting.”

Imparting and reinforcing information is critical to many meetings. “Say you are a pharmaceutical company with a new-drug launch. There is a lot of pressure to impart information as quickly as possible to your reps. Once you hit the street, you have a window of about a year to sell it. Your reps must be trained fast and effectively.”In such cases, Image Base usually coordinates with a specialized training company to maximize meeting success. “In a three-day meeting, you might train for two afternoons.” Murnyak prefers afternoons for training work. “In the mornings, you want to get their attention with videos and presentations from executives as they get in their seats, to establish the meeting’s theme and lay out the basic information. The afternoon is best for training, and the evenings should be entertaining.”

In an Image Base-produced meeting, it all serves the business purpose. “In a well-produced meeting, even the entertainment should reinforce the theme,” Murnyak says. “For example, we did a meeting for a military group. For entertainment, we put on a USO show in a hangar.”

The most common meeting mistakes, Murnyak says, are 1) trying to say too much, 2) speakers who run over their time limits and 3) inadequate rehearsal of speakers.”People try to communicate too much, they go from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. – it can’t be done,” Murnyak emphasizes. “You have got to give them breaks.”

Breaks are often planned but not taken due to unplanned delays. “There is always a tendency to underestimate the time speakers will take. If a session goes 40 minutes over, it can ruin the meeting schedule,” Murnyak says. Holding speeches to allotted times requires a “deft touch,” he acknowledges. “The client needs somebody inside their organization, driving the meeting, who is empowered to make decisions.”

The real solution is to have, for instance, an executive vice president, who can tell the CEO 1) how long to speak and 2) that the CEO must rehearse his speech.

“We ask them to submit their speeches, but they really need to show up for rehearsal,” Murnyak says. “A big meeting is a theatrical event, you have to rehearse for it. The professional executives do rehearsals. Lee Iacocca would show up for rehearsal. It’s the people who don’t have any experience who underrate how important it is.”The Image Base team rehearses the equipment as well as the speakers. “We usually have one or two technical rehearsals to test computer feeds, videos, magnifications and other staging elements,” Murnyak says. “It’s like a Broadway show – form follows function. The rule is, have something to say and say it well.”

Putting on the Ritz
Location is often a critical component of meeting success. Ritz-Carlton Hotels host 8,000 meetings a year, many of them sales gatherings. Sales VP Joann Kurtz-Ahlers says companies seek Ritz’s quality for several reasons. “Holding your meeting at a luxury hotel like Ritz sends a message that the meeting is important to attend,” she notes. “It means that the company is truly investing in its sales force.”

“Salespeople feel special and get excited about meeting at famous hotels,” Kurtz-Ahlers argues. And there are practical advantages to Ritz’s downtown location in major cities that may offset some of the per night charges. “They are easy to get to,” Kurtz-Ahlers points out. Airlines fly more frequent and reasonably priced service to major cities, and downtown usually has more ground transportation options.

The Ritz executive has seen enough sales gatherings to develop her own rules for successful meetings. Like Ralph Murnyak, she thinks breaks, brevity and movement are essential to keep attendees wide awake for the important speeches.

The conference center advantage
When the primary purposes of a sales force meeting are truly meetings and training, some top companies seek the carefully tailored facilities of conference centers. Although lodging is comfortable and recreation opportunities are available nearby, professional conference centers focus on business: small meetings among top staff, training by book and practice, and even quiet places for doing homework at night.

“Living, learning and leisure are the three components of a successful meeting,” says Wendy Blumberg. “At a conference center, we don’t mix them up – each component is done separately in a different environment.”

Blumberg knows this business. She directs marketing for Xerox Document University in Leesburg, VA, and heads the International Association of Conference Centers (IACC), a group of 200 professional centers in the United States.

Many IACC sites have resort-type accommodations and sports like golf nearby. But the emphasis is on small, productive meetings and real learning. “For Xerox, new hires get 10 days to two weeks of training here,” Blumberg says. “The minimum stay is one week, and some go up to three weeks.” Leesburg learners do class-work, self-paced learning on computers and often plenty of homework. “It’s pretty intense.”

Along with training, conference centers allow small meetings among salespeople and top company executives. “There is lots of strategic planning here, and there are plenty of top-level executives,” Blumberg notes. “The CEOs usually don’t come for the whole week, but they can make their points briefly in smaller sessions.”

Conference centers have become a favorite resource of Fortune 500 firms and new high-tech companies where a lot of technical information must be taught quickly. Like most IACC facilities, Xerox University was founded by a single major firm but is now used by many other companies.

Outside the Unites States, there are about another 100 professional meeting centers, Blumberg estimates. And the focus is the same: “We are all pretty purist and serious,” Blumberg says. “What counts is the quality of the meeting and training experience.”Do your salespeople want – and deserve – it all? You might look westward to the Rockies. Companies that seek to combine world-class conference facilities with big-city cultural offerings and leisure activities in a dramatic setting have a new option. Colorado’s Telluride Conference Center, which opened in June 1999, offers just about everything, according to executive director John Burchmore.

Telluride’s eight-year-old Peaks resort and Golden Door Spa offer 40,000 square feet of spa space, plus “golf, tennis, biking, hiking, jeep tours and scavenger hunts in the mountains,” Burchmore says. The old mining town also has a 100-year-old historic district for visitors who want to visit another country – the Old West.

The newest piece of silver in this treasure chest is a conference center just a two-mile gondola ride from the old town. It includes a 500-seat auditorium, which is really a “performing arts center,” Burchmore says. The set has 23-foot ceilings and 70 theatrical lighting instruments. “Anyone doing a meeting with any type of theatrical elements or high level of production will get much more than just a meeting room.”

The biggest draw at Telluride is the variety possible within a fairly concentrated space. “We have the Joffrey Ballet in summer residence,” Burchmore points out. “And there is a 25-year-old jazz festival, so you can attend a concert in the afternoon, then go to lecture in the evening.”

Burchmore has worked at similar business/pleasure resorts such as Aspen and Snowmass. The aim of his Telluride Center is to help meeting planners coordinate lodging, transportation, conference space, culture and sports in very special location.