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from: Philip Cheatham

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The Automotive Software Dec 17 Article

5 Tricks To Hold The Most... Kick Ass & Productive Meetings...

And How To Use Them...

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By Philip Cheatham Dec 17, 2020

Prepare for each meeting shortly before the meeting: This Sounds obvious but I have seen a lot of management meetings and they are usually total repeats. You need to keep your content fresh if you want your team paying attention in your meetings.
Consistency: Another seemingly obvious one that a lot of stores have down as far as making sure its completed, but is whats covered consistent? Is your structure the same everyday? Is the goal of the meeting the same everyday? There must be time inside your structure for the fresh content we talked about above, but you also must be as consistent as you can be in every aspect.
Make sure you have an exercise that catches people off guard: This makes sure your team is on their toes at all times. It also keeps the meeting engaging and kiss ass! Here are some ideas...
Make sure every meeting includes praise: Most stores do a pretty good job of using meetings to announce bonuses etc. I see this pretty dialed in. Most stores could also benefit from 10xing this, here are some things you can do...
Always end on a high note: I know sometimes you want to rip your entire team to shreds. I've been there. I've also held some meetings I wish I never did. Heres how to make sure no matter how bad it gets, you end your meeting on a high note and why...

Prepare for each meeting shortly before the meeting: This Sounds obvious but I have seen a lot of management meetings and they are usually total repeats. You need to keep your content fresh if you want your team paying attention in your meetings. The real trick here is having a theme or a different story everyday used to teach and get across a point thats been circling your head. You should be like a pastor basically. Your meeting is your sermon. It better be. Steve Jobs #2 guy did not have a title that ended with an "O". His number 2 guy's title was "Head Evangelist". You need to preach if you want to hold kick ass, engaging and productive meetings. You've been given a pedestal to do so as of now, if you hold your meetings, and it is your duty to use it. It's your duty to use it to give whatever knowledge is floating around up there in your head to help the people you've been tasked with leading. The best secret I could give here, is to tell you to make sure you spend time thinking right before your meeting, driving in to the meeting. Think about the recent good bad and ugly in your store and your most recent epiphanies or almost epiphanies you are still having. I used to use stories that happened in the dealership quite a bit without naming names. People I liked, that respected me would know I was talking about something they could've done better, but only they knew that. Make sure these are teaching moments. If you don't have a solution, don't ever talk about what somebody did that they could've done better. It's your job, if you're holding the meeting to have solutions for everything you bring up, this should be a given. Once again, you are the pastor. This is your stage and your attendees will spend time they will never get back listening to you. Make sure you don't waste their time and give them something good. Every meeting.

Now you do need a strict structure and I will talk about that in the second point, but if you don't have time to be a philosopher inside your meetings for at least 8 minutes, you are not holding a sales meeting. You are holding an administrative meeting. A real meeting has a sermon. It has a point. It has a theme. It has a story you tell. That story could simply be how to do something, but its a story none the less. If you are holding your meetings and this time isn't currently in the structure. Put it in there and don't take no for an answer. 8 minutes. This is where your real leadership gold is, because to get people to follow you, you must give them something. The better whatever you give them is, the more they'll want to and be inclined to follow you. You need your team to follow you! They need you to lead them. We can call this a trick but the trick is basically just giving your team whatever you're currently learning and figuring out or have already figured out a long time ago and they need now. You know what they need now, because you are in the store all the time. If you do this, I promise you will never lack something to talk about. It's like me writing these articles. One leads to another etc. Some stuff will inevitably need to be recycled too. Thats ok, if you're applying it to new scenarios and delivering it new people and or on a new day! Please teach what you've learned to your people, this will help you get better and the value of what you can give this way is truly priceless. You will know you are doing this well if after your meetings, maybe the same day or even years later, people from your meetings will remind you of things you taught them.

Consistency: Another seemingly obvious one that a lot of stores have down, at least as far as making sure they get a meeting completed, but is whats covered consistent? Is your structure the same everyday? If you're not having a morning meeting everyday, I'd equate that with not brushing your teeth. I'm not going to even go into why, because it should be that obvious. You need to start having a morning meeting now if you aren't, and it is probably more imperative than brushing your teeth. You can buy fake teeth lol. You can't have any direction over your teams day without a daily meeting. Its bonkers to think otherwise! We have a huge opportunity if we aren't doing meetings everyday, so if you're reading this article and aren't holding a daily morning sales meeting, you can use all this stuff and start with a kick ass meeting! Please!

Is the goal of the meeting the same everyday? There must be time inside your structure for the fresh content like we just talked about above, but you also must be as consistent as you can be in every aspect. I will talk about some exercise examples in some of the next points, but the key to consistency is that you literally do these in order everyday. This gives you command. It sets expectations. It also makes it easy for you to focus on the preparation for your 8 minute daily sermon. The rest of the meeting should just flow and be relatively the same everyday. If we talk about sold units from the prior day, this should be done at the same time in every meeting. Maybe its 1st up on the agenda, maybe its last, thats up to you, just make sure its consistent. Obviously, to actually do this you should create a meeting doc. Inside this doc, the day before, you can update what changed for the following day. If you announce who's in 1st place etc, just make sure its the same time in your meeting everyday. Inside your meeting doc, you can update this the prior evening or get in early and do it. If you do housekeeping, same thing. Your 8 minute sermon, should be somewhere in the middle of everything else you are doing. I like warm ups personally and some exercises I will share in the next points before the sermon. You want people awake before you start in on your Aristotle. Consistency will also help you if you ever have somebody with you helping in the meeting. It will allow you to hold your meeting with much more ease. You will be able to take one of your guys and go "do the first half of the meeting, I already set up the doc." They do the administrative part. You aren't giving up your meeting! Your real meeting is in the sermon. This will make your sermon better sometimes, if you let somebody else do the administrative portion. (I'd use whoever I want up next on the desk for this) Your meeting should literally be broken down in 5 minute increments. Maybe its a 15 minute sermon, but you know before your meeting starts exactly where that 15 minute block is. This is simple preparation. You must over prepare to refine! So the trick here is making that meeting doc if you don't already have one and start fine tuning!

Make sure you have an exercise that catches people off guard: This makes sure your team is on their toes at all times. It also keeps the meeting engaging and kick ass! Here are some ideas: My favorite idea is to make people learn and be able to recite something on command, usually your dealership or company motto. Maybe the Lexus Covenant. Maybe you make it up yourself. It should be slightly difficult and take an evening with the spouse to be able to recite. This will make your new guys know they need to learn it because they may be called upon. This is also almost like an initiation into the club. It creates a comradery once you recite it in full for your first time being called upon. And once Your old timers have been reciting it for years, they'll be able to do it on the fly, so they may be asleep in the beginning of your meeting, this is when you call on them and make them recite it anyway. It'll still wake them up! This takes less than 2 or 3 minutes calling on 1-3 people everyday! This is great consistency. You can make this a little more difficult and create an array of things for your team that they must learn. And quiz them at random. I like to do this within the first 5-10 minutes of the meeting. Its a Great warm-up as you can imagine. It must be non-negotiable for anybody who works in your store to know whatever this is or it won't work. When you call on a new guy and they don't know it, you tell them, you gotta know that to work here! Just like that. This is fun! They'll love it! Maybe looks corny from the outside, it builds a strong team from the inside. Use it!

Make sure every meeting includes praise: Most stores do a pretty good job of using meetings to announce bonuses etc. I see this pretty dialed in. Most stores could also benefit from 10xing this, here are some things you can do:

Its a given that if you're giving away cash, you should do it in your meetings. Don't waste the opportunity to get your team hyped. This for me is like the politicians that say "never let a good crisis go to waste." For me, its never hand out a dollar spiff etc without making a big deal about it and getting everybody as pumped up as you possibly can. I love having a place in the dealership either before open or where customers aren't around to play loud music and throw around money. This is one of the best parts of our business! Don't waste this at all. I think its a sin not to make a show of it. This being said lets get into more that you can do with this philosophy to max out!

First, towards the end of my meeting structure, I'm going to put "Leaderboards." This is where I'm going to announce who's in the lead in as many departments as I can create a leaderboard in. Depending on the mood I'd say both "Lets go all the way to 11th place" or "anything past 2nd doesn't even count." Have fun with it and spice it up! First of the month make sure to tell everybody that you forgot everything that ever happened and that any money they ever made you, you already spent lol. This is funny to say, make sure your team knows you have their back making jokes like this! If they do, they'll love them! These jokes will marinate in their head if they respect you and motivate them! I'm going to make sure I give extra claps to people that hold that #1 spot down all the time! I will also joke with the rest of the team and ask when they will catch that person. I'll then look at them and say "It's windy at the top." Keep them on their toes! Have Fun! We work in a celebratory business. If you aren't celebrating your wins and winners at every chance you get, they will slow down. If you can beef up the celebrations, they will speed up. Always keep this in mind and don't lose sight of it!

Secondly, if I hold competitions and there are any sort of prizes or cash, I make this a big deal. I talk about it at every meeting leading up to the "awards ceremony." or whatever you want to call it. I think its a cardinal sin as I already stated to ever give out spiff money outside of a meeting. As many eyes as we can get on handing out money, we want. This should be a no brainer. Think of things you can do to 10x the celebration at every turn. I'm sure you already have some ideas. Go do that! It doesn't even matter that I just gave away the secret to why we want the celebration and eyes, they still love it lol. Everybody loves money and a celebration, duh.

Always end on a high note: I know sometimes you want to rip your entire team to shreds. I've been there. I've also held some meetings I wish I never did. Heres how to make sure that no matter how bad it gets, you end your meeting on a high note and why:

Don't ever end your meeting on a down note. It sets the stage for the day. Unfortunately, negative energy lasts longer than positive energy, so coming back from a down meeting is tough. I know sometimes your entire store f'd up and you can absolutely tell them when this happens. You must always figure out a way to turn your meeting towards a positive future before its over or you can do serious damage. People are fragile. All of us have something wrong in our lives most of the time. Putting people down purposely and not lifting them up and telling them its all going to be ok and how its all going to be ok as their leader, is just wrong. It really is just plain wrong. Most of us have done it, we always know shortly afterwards when that feeling creeps in. Just don't ever do it!

OK Phil, I get I should never do it, but how?

Heres my trick: It fits into your structure. Its the last thing you do. At the end of every meeting, no matter what, you have a huddle. The old school huddle was where we all put our hands in and recited something bad ass to kick off the day. The social distanced huddle may look different but same concept. Just like a football team before the game. Create a chant!

I want to add a note on the stuff that may sound corny, hell, it may be corny. I remember being at a restaurant once and I watched them make the whole staff sing and it seemed embarrassing to me. If you know what I'm taking about, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, well this isn't that! Its not. Ever see the bell rings at Harley? This is that! Some people may still not like it, once you start dancing it becomes fun! Just do it! I promise you and your team will be thankful you did!

Additional Reading: The Central Desking Make A Deal Meeting