Ever finished the day, gone home and felt like your entire day was a meeting? I used to feel that way in a previous life. Every time I was called into a meeting I rolled my eyes and thought OMG who will waffle on this time (there was always one!) I came to detest meetings, they dragged on and either no decisions were made, or if they were, no one ever followed up and it wasn’t on the agenda for the following week.
Now this is not to say that meetings are not necessary – they are very necessary, but only if they have a purpose or an outcome and as long as tasks are set and met. So if you find yourself in a meeting and your eyes start to stare at a mark on the wall, then clearly whoever is holding the meeting has not given anyone any direction. If you’re facilitating the meeting and your team are not engaged, them it’s time to change things up.
In the construction industry there are a few different types of meetings, Sales, Operations, Design, Workflow and so on, so the first step is to determine what meetings you need to have in place. Mapping out what your business needs is not that hard. Always start with what is generating your business income, the number one driver would be sales. So let’s start there.
Sales meetings 101
- Depending on the size of your business you may choose to have these weekly, fortnightly, or monthly
- An agenda would need to be typed up and maintain with the following headings
- Sales from the previous time frame
- Forecast sales for the next week, fortnight, or month
- Discuss KPI’s around sales targets and workload
- General topics around sales and marketing
The above are just some points as to what you may want in your agenda. Remember to always communicate to your entire team the outcomes of each meeting.
We can waste a lot of time having meetings to have a meeting and yes, they can become tiresome and inefficient, so remember whatever the size of your business, meetings are necessary as long as they are to the point, have a purpose and an outcome and are no longer than 1 hour.