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Follow these seven guidelines to prepare a more effective agenda for your next sales meeting.

1. Concentrate on a few related major points or issues. If you must deal with a number of unrelated issues, schedule fewer topics and consider two sales meetings instead of one.

2. Organize the meeting but not so tightly that it precludes full participation by your sales staff.

3. Distribute your sales meeting agenda in advance, if you want your staff to prepare ahead of time. Two days before the meeting is usually sufficient. For a sales meeting that requires extensive planning, distribute the agenda a week or more ahead of time.

4. Indicate on the agenda who will attend, along with the specifics of the time and place.

5. Make your agenda an upbeat document. Reflect opportunities, not problems. If you call the sales meeting to solve a difficult problem, there is little point in burdening the participants with a sense of doom before the meeting begins. Present your staff with an opportunity to solve the problem, no matter how challenging it is. Help them develop this attitude as they approach the meeting place.

6. Never open your sales meeting with negative statements like, “This is the third meeting on this subject after two meetings with poor results.” Avoid any statement that automatically classifies the meeting as mundane or routine, such as opening the agenda with “As usual, we will…”

7. Make sure your agenda is specific about time. Indicate the starting and stopping time and also the time allocated for each presentation or topic of discussion. Keep to this schedule.

These seven guidelines can help you make your sales staff look forward to the meeting rather than dread it. Organized and productive sales meetings help your staff pull together to win the race to close more sales!