“Meetings are one of the most pernicious thieves of selling and productivity in business. There are too many meetings and too many bad meetings. Good companies constantly rip out the root causes of inefficiency and waste in production, administration, distribution, and marketing. Good companies abhor waste, and because meetings are often huge time wasters, meetings are managed to make money and to overcome challenges,” says Jeffrey Fox in his book How to Be a Fierce Competitor.

How many bad meetings have you participated in? How many times have you nearly fallen out of your seat from a meeting that was boring, non-productive, and a complete waste of time? Fox recommends that all meetings should be tied directly or indirectly to generating revenues, to reducing costs, and to preventing catastrophes for the company. Building product manufacturers need to ensure that any meetings they conduct with team members follow these critical requirements.

Fox outlines many signs of a bad building product manufacturer meeting. The warning signs for manufacturers include:

• The Monday Morning staff meeting. It’s regularly scheduled. Everyone attends. It’s become an office tradition like the Friday Pizza Lunch, Aunt Gertrude’s Bad Christmas Sweater party, and the Boss’s annual Cinco De Mayo Margarita Fiesta.
• A mob of people is invited to the meeting including interns and the office janitor.
• The meeting is boring. It’s boring a hole through your brain and you might not survive the dull event unless you refill your coffee cup for the 15th time.
• The meeting accomplishes nothing because decisions are delayed for another darn meeting.

Building product manufacturers should always ask, ‘how is this meeting going to make me money?’. Will the meeting increase product specifications? Will the meeting teach new skills to product reps? Will the meeting help reduce costs, improve quality, or crush the competition? If the answer is no, then ditch the meeting.

Fox outlines what he calls a ‘money meeting’ which must sell the attendees on why they should participate in the meeting. A ‘money meeting’ should have desired outcomes and ensure that the end result will lead to increased revenues. Fox defines a ‘money meeting’ as one in which you:

• Meet with customers. This could be architects, specifiers, contractors, etc.
• Educate attendees. Product reps receive crucial training about a new product or LEED v4 requirements and credits.
• Make decisions. Significant decisions are made about pricing, cutting costs, etc.
• Meet for less than an hour. Wasted minutes is lost money.

How does your company justify meetings? What strategies do you use to ensure a ‘money meeting’ happens?