Meetings should be fun, informative and inspiring. It is too easy to lose people’s interest and once lost, it becomes harder to get them back. It is also bad advertising for your business. The goal must be to ensure people have a pleasant experience whether they stay interested or not, because this could possibly be the fundamental activity that underpins our business.
In our business there are two types of meetings. One to deliver a message that inspires people to action and the other to educate. There is a big difference between the two, however, many aspects of the way they are run are similar.
Initial meetings are almost definitely meant to inspire. The formats are generally the same. An introduction
which usually contains (or should contain) a personal story that tells us why the speaker is involved in the business and their speaking credentials. At many of the meetings we here lots of people telling us how well they are doing. They are known as “Call to Action” or what some people know as RaRa meetings. They are designed to attract people to get involved and the focus is a lot about money.
In my view they lose their impact for at least two reasons. Not everybody has money as a priority and at many of the meetings I have attended the speaker has not established connection with their audience and does not open up their listening. The speaker also does not listen to the audience and hence is unable to reestablish connection when lost.
People are not capable of absorbing huge amounts of information and yet in several meetings I have observed the speakers flooding their audience with piles of information. Almost a waste of time really because little gets through and even less remembered.
The UnFranchise Business is huge and complicated. It takes time to learn and become familiar with all the intricacies of the system, the processes and the products. It is really up to the individual to spend time absorbing as much as possible, however, training meetings should be designed to aid this learning rather than overloading people with too much information.
There is a lot to learn about facilitating meetings. Opening up the listening, telling them what you will tell them, connecting to the audience, maintaining that connection, structured content, connecting each stage to the next, how to manage questions, summing up, tell them what you told them and lots more. It is a skill that can be learnt.
These areas will be covered in this section before long.
