Meetings
(Controlling the discussion)
Sales
and advertising are both functions of marketing, which involves getting
products from the idea stage to consumers. Many small companies run advertising
first to support the selling function. The advertising helps inform consumers
and business customers about the company's products and services. Subsequently,
sales reps call on consumers or business customers to close the deal. Small
companies may use either more advertising or more selling, which largely depends
upon the nature of the businesses. Sales and advertising can be marketed
through meetings.
In any
meeting that you organize, particularly as an entrepreneur speaking with
mentors or board members, you need to stay in control. That doesn’t mean you
stop others from talking – quite the contrary – but you need to keep tight
reins on what’s going on. This is also true when doing customer development
interviews; there’s room for customers to talk freely of course, but if you
don’t have a script and solid agenda, you’ll find that you spend the time
chatting casually with customers and not really learning anything. You might
feel great after, because the meeting was friendly and positive, only to
realize it was largely a waste of time.
Here
are 5 quick tips for staying in control of meetings:
1. Prepare
people in advance. Send a meeting agenda in advance. Don’t assume everyone
knows what you want to talk about, or that everyone has the same priorities.
Spell it out for them.
2. Have
very specific goals. The more specific your goals, the better. Remind people at
the beginning of the meeting about what you’re trying to accomplish and how
they can best help. Ask specific questions. “We’re thinking about such and
such…” might be a good conversation starter, but more often than not it’ll lead
into a rathole.
3. Timebox
everything. Allot specific amounts of time to specific parts of the agenda.
Keep tabs on the time and pace of the meeting.
4. Cut
people off. Don’t be afraid to cut people off and bring them back on track.
Even if everyone has the best intentions, you need to be prepared and capable
of telling them to stop and be quiet (in a nice way!)
5. Mutual
goals and value. Harley Finklestein from Shopify has a very interesting Mixergy
interview about Agile Business Development with some related points. One of the
concepts he describes is “Candid Objectives” (which is similar to #2 above).
But he also talks about explicitly describing the mutual goals and value you’re
trying to create in a meeting. For business development that makes a lot of
sense, but it also rings true for meetings with mentors, and particularly for
board meetings (where everyone needs to get value out of the process.) “What’s
in it for me?” (for other meeting participants) is something you should think
about in any meeting.
Meetings
somehow auto-magically fill up the time that you’ve allotted for them. If you
say it’s a 1 hour meeting it’ll take 1 hour. If you plan for 2 hours, somehow
it takes 2 hours. I’ve been in meetings that took less time than planned, and
people actually felt awkward about it – “Um, so is that it? There’s nothing
else? We’re probably missing something, so we should schedule another meeting…”
Ugh.
Try
shorter meetings with more precise agendas and goals, and see if you get things
equally accomplished. You’ll probably get more done in less time. It’s all
about focus. And control.
Source :
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/differences-between-sales-advertising-25769.html [Diakses pada 23 Desember 2018]
http://www.instigatorblog.com/controlling-meetings/2012/04/12/ [Diakses pada 23 Desember 2018]
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