When I first started off in Sales, I always thought an agenda was a waste of time. Just more paperwork, and do I honestly need an agenda for an upcoming meeting when I already know in my head what we want to accomplish? Let’s just say, I learned the hard way!
I think it was actually after a sales meeting that I had with a large potential customer in Massachusetts that became the turning point for me. During the meeting, I remember seeing all these attendees walk into the conference room before we got started. I thought to myself, “this is way more people than I had anticipated. Who were they? My goodness, this meeting room might not even be big enough to seat everyone. Were all of these people necessary for this meeting? Did they all have a say in the decision on my software that I was presenting?”
These troubling thoughts filled my mind and I knew I was in trouble. I thought we were just doing a high-level overview presentation of my software with just a couple of people. I knew that I should have spent more time on ironing out an agenda with the customer before the meeting…
All of the above could have been prevented by providing the customer with a detailed agenda. And with gaining agreement from them, on a well laid-out flow that articulated the topics to be covered, the allotted timeframe and duration, the order of topics to be covered, the goals for the meeting, and lastly, the attendees. I didn’t do this. I did have an agenda, but it was a generic one that I created on my own, without any buy-in from the customer. I didn’t even send it to them in advance of the meeting!
What was even more embarassing was the fact that my boss had also joined me for the meeting and I didn’t have enough printed copies of my generic agenda for all the attendees! It completely showed that I had no clue that this many people were attending. I had no control and that wasn’t a good thing for an opportunity of this size.
This was a mistake that I would not make again. Going forward, you always must have an agenda for every client meeting. The agenda should be based on exactly what you discussed with your customer before the meeting, and with THEIR INPUT! That’s right, you create a draft agenda, and then review it with the customer after sending it to them. You then call your customer (your contact) and you can review and refine the agenda with any changes that they recommend.
You would be amazed at how helpful this is. Often times the customer will change the entire order of the agenda because they will tell you that certain attendees will only be able to join at certain times. Or that the big boss will want to cover a specific topic immediately at the beginning of the meeting. Or that you have way too much time allocated towards a specific topic that can be slimmed down.
It truly is quite enlightening to gather such awesome input and buy-in from the client ahead of your meeting. This also boosts confidence when you kick off the meeting as you can tout to the audience that it was you and your contact that worked together to create a well laid-out agenda for today’s presentation. That means a lot to the audience, especially to a high level executive or business owner, as they know now that their time will be well spent as the meeting was organized ahead of time.
Don’t wing it! Spend the time to create a dialed-in agenda with your customer ahead of the meeting. Keep in mind, that your contact also has a stake in this too. They don’t want to be responsible for wasting everyone’s time if the meeting is not a productive one or not what the attendees (their peers) had in mind.
Agendas set the stage for solid, productive meetings that will accomplish the goals that you and your client have for the meeting. You are selling (whether you realize it or not) by embracing this best practice. Do it for EVERY meeting!
-Happy Selling!