The Dreaded Meeting....Making Them Productive

The business events I remember most from my brief experience working in corporate America are the endless daily and weekly meetings. Most were not productive. So when I became an entrepreneur, I vowed not to have them. Then I realized that was impossible.
Meetings are crucial, but how can you make them as effective as possible.
Author Patrick Lencioni, in his book, "Death by Meeting," says business owners should inject drama into their meetings to make the events more productive. For example, he believes the key to injecting drama into a meeting is being as direct as possible during the first 10 minutes of a meeting so everyone understands what is at stake.
Try injecting some drama into your next meeting and see if the results change.
--Ron Ameln, SBM

Building Value Into Your Sales

It's a story most know by now. Wal-Mart discovered that a large percentage of its purchasing agents' time was spent researching and purchasing products, which contributed only a small percentage to profits. The solution: use the Internet exclusively to purchase goods.
It became Wal-Mart's new purchasing protocol and the company was able to reduce the size of its purchasing staff dramatically.
What did this mean for the many salespeople that called on Wal-Mart? Log onto the computer and answer the questions and good luck.
If you sell commodities, or anything these days, and don't offer something of real value, buyers will need you less and less. And that's not a good thing for sales professionals out there.
No matter what your business, you need to differentiate yourself from the competition and provide the real (I can't live without it) value.
--Ron Ameln, SBM