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Submitted by tschmidt24 on
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I'm a sales manager at an automotive dealership, and I want to start running weekly staff meetings. I listened to the "How to Run Your Staff Meeting" podcast, and I wanted to hear any tweaks or adjustments anyone has made to the process and/or agenda for their sales staff meetings.

I have 2 groups of directs. One group has 3 sales people and the other group has 4 sales people. The groups have different functions in the sales department, so I was planning on having 2 staff meetings.

Thank you for any feedback.

mkirk's picture
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Hey there,

You can't go wrong starting with the MT 'cast.

Now, where I am, we have one meeting for the whole team, though it's a bit like your situation, there are two distinct areas that people work in. Our meeting is a Friday afternoon round table with no agendas, no preparation, no timekeeping and no purpose. And the Boss rarely attends. So you can imagine how terrible it is.

And here's the thing I wanted to say: it's YOUR staff meeting, they're YOUR folks, it's how YOU manage it that's important, it's how YOU behave that sends a message. Do it like we do and you send a clear message about your management style and your priorities (you can guess what that those messages are here :-( ).

So in your case, I suggest that you don't run two meetings because you'll give slightly different messages to the two teams. Just do the opposite of what we do (as per the MT 'cast) and you'll send equally powerful messages. Including one about the importance of building relationships across the two sales teams.

Good luck!

MK

williamelledgepe's picture
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I follow the agenda per MT - and it works well: waterfall, special topic, and briefings.  I do have to admit that with 9 direct reports and a ten minute briefing - it gets a bit long - so I reduced briefings to 5-8 minutes (8 minutes on the agenda) and I have the staff meeting every other week.  I do find that waterfall can be problematic when there are two weeks between waterfalls.  Every now and then we have to add an impromptu "Standup Meeting" to allow for particularly important waterfall items (or to keep the waterfall within the standard agenda time).  I can see why the recommendation is weekly, but I do it every two weeks.

Also, I have a group of directs that serve two very different functions.  I thought about splitting them into two staff meetings, but the group has responded well to being in one group - even though the functions are quite different.