Books Unwound

This is part of an in depth review of  The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies, by Chet Holmes.  We will focus on 1 section at at time and distill the best information to help your business now.  This should not be considered a replacement for the actual book, which will usually have a lot more in depth information as well as stories, which are an important way to communicate the essentials.  If you find the information in these posts helpful, I recommend buying the book or borrowing it from your library.  

Chapter 3: Executing Effective Meetings – How to Work Together to Improve Every Aspect of Your Company Using Workshop Training

Part 1: Workshops

In this chapter, Chet Holmes talks in depth about using workshop style meetings.  Workshops are nice in that they accomplish many things.  Good training can happen in a workshop.  Business improvement comes out of these sessions.  Team building and personal improvement is also a natural by-product. 

With regular workshops that are specifically dedicated to improving all aspects of your company, you will have an edge toward building The Ultimate Sales Machine.

A workshop meeting is when you bring together relevant people to focus on fixing one small piece of the business. You continue to do this one bit at a time, and soon there will be noticeable change at your company.  Together the group brainstorms ideas, sketches out new procedures, and crafts new policies.  These are the 3 P’s, planning, procedures, and policies, that Holmes says are essential to easily and quickly turn your business into a finely tuned machine.

The ultimate goal of these workshop meetings is to develop systems that make running the business easy and makes growth a real possibility.  Take the 50 new hires test.  The goal for your company, whether large or small, is to have systems built and in place that make it possible for you to hire 50 new people every week and fit them seamlessly into your company.  

Even a sole proprieter needs to develop systems.  If you think small, you will remain small.  But if you think like a big company, you will position yourself for growth.  

You need to schedule at least 1 hour long workshop meeting per week to work on the 3 Ps.  This is important time spent working on the business.  The nice thing about including everyone is that you will get more ideas and solutions then you could ever come up with on your own.  As to who to include in these meetings, if you are a small company with under 30 employees, you should literally include everyone.  Larger companies can do this on a department basis. 

Let go of the idea that you need to come up with every solution by yourself.  A good staff will feed you with great ideas. Chet Holmes says, “If you have a good staff, the only thing you need to bring to a meeting or workshop is your judgement.”  

This one profound idea will make it possible for you to steer your company to greatness much faster then you thought was humanly possible.  That is because you will be leveraging the group, and giving them a share of the responsibility to get you to the end game.

Workshops are excellent tools for harnessing the potential of your staff and directing it toward specific needs within your company.  Workshops are not meetings where you talk and they listen.  They are a opportunity for everyone to work together on a problem, crafting solutions that will move your company to the next level.  

Workshops also have the benefit of bringing your staff together and building a strong sense of teamwork.  Not only will employees learn how to work together, they will gain a vision for the company and their role within it.  Within a workshop, you will also have a great opportunity to build morale, influence attitudes, teach and train, and set the course clearly for the business so that everyone understands it.

Step-by-Step to an Outstanding Workshop

The first thing you need to do is to schedule workshops.  These should be weekly and non-negotiable.  Schedule them for a time that is convenient, but do not let convenience overrule having the workshop.  Done right, workshops will not only save your business, they will turn it into a powerhouse.  How important is the future of your business to you?

Next, plan the first meeting.  If you have a hot topic already, you can start there.  If not, you can have an idea-gathering workshop.  For instance, you may ask a general question, such as how can we improve the business, or a certain aspect of the business?  The best bet is to have everyone write down three ideas and then go around and share them.  

The success or failure of the workshop hinges on the leader of the workshop.  He has the most control over the experience and the outcome.  He also needs to be the one to keep the meeting moving so it doesn’t get stalled out.  

Finally, run the workshop.    Holmes has seven steps to successful workshops.

1. Appoint someone to lead.  This will usually be the boss or department manager, unless she gives control over to someone else.
2. Write the focus question down on a whiteboard.
3. Have everyone write down their ideas on their own paper.  Give a few minutes for this.  
4. Go around the room and write down the ideas on the whiteboard.
5. Vote on the ideas.  Have each person write down what they think are the top three ideas, in order.  
6. Tally the vote.  Go around the room and get everyone’s ranking.  Next to each idea, add 3 slashes for a first choice, 2 for a second, and 1 for a third.  The ideas that receive the higest votes will be integrated into later workshops for development.  
7. Implement.  Holmes has a whole section on implementation, which we will review in the next post.  

More Than Just Talk

Workshops are designed to bring about action.  If you just talk about new ideas, but never take action on them, then you will be wasting everyone’s time.  As a result of a workshop, you will have a list of improvements that you can incorporate into your business.  You will need to assign each one of those ideas to its own workshop.  The follow up workshops will focus on solving problems and setting up procedures to put the idea into action.  You need to approach this methodically and with determination, until each issue has been resolved and each new idea has been implemented.  

All the work will not happen within the workshop setting.  At the end of each meeting, you need to assign tasks for people to accomplish prior to the next meeting.  If the task is too big to be accomplished by the next meeting, it will need to be broken down into smaller tasks or perhaps given the full attention of a future workshop.

As new procedures and policies come out of workshops, be sure to write them down and send them out to everyone. This will solidify the decsisions.  Also, put these procedures into a binder.  You are creating your training manual, from which new hires will be able to get up to speed and perform a peak levels quickly.  

Take a moment to digest what you are going to be able to accomplish with workshops.  Holmes gives a great example.  After planning, testing, and establishing policies for every step of the sales process, from prospecting all the way through follow-up, you will have a full procedure for everything.  When you bring in a new salesperson, everything is already there and waiting for her.  In the training manual is the input of the team, influenced by real experiences, with ideas from different personalities, all pointing to the best practice for every single part of the selling process.  Think about how much faster this new salesperson will get up to speed!  

The biggest key to workshops being successful is that you committ to doing them continually.  If you do that, you will unleash a whole new level of success in your business.  

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Coming next: Chapter Three, Part Two – Ten Steps to Implementing Any New Policy

Buy or Not: This book is a buy.  It can be used as a manual for reshaping your business which you will refer to time and again.  Buy this book at Amazon.

Bradford Shimp helps small business owners and entrepreneurs build successful businesses.  Read his blog at www.allbizanswers.com.  Follow Bradford on Twitter.

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Executing Effective Meetings”