meetings | The Barefoot Spirit

5 Ways to Make Your Meetings More Effective

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 18:00:18 +0000

As we start out the new year, you can bet you’re going to be involved in a lot of meetings. The question is, “Are those meetings necessary and effective?” Because if they’re not, you’re just about ready to spend a lot of time, effort, and money taking people away from being productive so they can they update, socialize, and entertain each other at your expense!

Think that’s an exaggeration? Just add up the hourly rate of every attendee. Then, multiply it by the length of the meeting. Then add all the costs of preparation and you’ve got one, very expensive proposition. We know that certain meetings are necessary. Meeting can be useful to get everyone on the same page. Many are unavoidable, especially when you need the buy-in of all the stakeholders involved in a project.

Over the years we’ve held and attended thousands of meetings. Since we were paying for most of them, we had a sincere interest in keeping them short, effective, and action-oriented. We learned a lot of lessons by watching meetings degenerate and digress. We learned about best practices for meetings from colleagues and our own hard knocks. Here’s our short list for how to get the most out of the fewest and shortest meetings possible:

Purpose

When you call a meeting, be sure to lay out the ground rules right from the get-go. This means that you have to clearly identify the goals of the meeting, what you expect to accomplish, the decisions you expect to reach, who will lead the meeting, and most importantly, how long the meeting will take. This purpose and format needs to be communicated in all correspondence and calendar items. It needs to be the first statement made at the meeting.

Agenda

If you call the meeting, be sure to circulate your agenda well in advance. Give a time limit to each agenda item. Be on the lookout for attendees who attempt to introduce items not on the agenda. Be polite and suggest an off-line conversation on their issue and then get back on topic. Remember the reason for the meeting is education, discussion, and decisions. Keep the discussions on track. If someone else in your company calls the meeting, make sure they do the same.

Scribe

Assign someone to take notes. That same person is also the timekeeper. They are authorized to interrupt the meeting to remind the attendees of where they are timewise in the meeting and how much time is left. For a one-hour meeting, for instance, we think it is very effective to announce when there is only 15 minutes to go. This announcement helps the attendees focus on decisions, deadlines and action plans. In other words, it’s time to wrap it up! The scribe shortly thereafter circulates the notes, action items, assignees, and deadlines to the attendees.

Calendar

The best meetings are action-focused and that action must take place on or by a certain date. Have a calendar out at the meeting so all can see lead times and deadlines. The best meeting attendees take notes directly on their calendars because they know they have to make an appointment with themselves and block out time to execute their responsibility to the team and the project. Calendars are also a great way to get attendees to refocus on the agenda because you can ask them to set a date to discuss their off-agenda issues between themselves – when the other attendees don’t need to be involved.

Action Items

During the last five minutes of a, say, one-hour meeting, ask the scribe to announce the action items, assignees and deadlines. When each assignee hears the action item that they are committed to being read aloud to all the other attendees, they will be more likely to execute those action items on time. Keep track of progress going forward on an online meeting platform that can be used to educate, report on status, and collect input from the attendees.

Another time and cost-saving technique is to simply reduce the number of meetings altogether. Look for culprits that are happening because they always have or because it’s the monthly or weekly meeting. Try to have meetings only for the action-oriented purposes described above. It’s too expensive to have meetings simply out of habit or policy. Keep your people focused on production and don’t let them complain, “Oh No! Not another meeting!”

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Give Your People Permission to be Brilliant

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 17:00:13 +0000

These days there are tons of companies that say they want their people to be more engaged, but are they giving them permission to do so? Yes: permission! It’s subtle, but powerful.

Permission is a powerful idea in determining company culture. Are you giving your people permission to be creative, make decisions, solve problems, and take responsibility? Or, in the name of efficiency, structure, or compliance, are you preventing the very type of support you need?

Here are some ways to give your people permission:

Compensation

Some part of employees’ compensation should be based on sales, growth, and profits. It will take some time to identify and agree upon metrics used to measure those key indicators, but get started now and tweak it every year until it’s right.

If you offer a bonus, make it quarterly. A year is too long for them to remember, and after a poor first half of the year, they may just give up. Quarterly is short enough to remember, and if they have a bad quarter, well, there’s a new opportunity next quarter.

Knowledge

Your staff can’t help you if you don’t tell them what you need. Many businesses believe in the “need-to-know” policy which keeps employees in the dark. We believe in the “know-the-need” policy which includes them in the company’s challenges, opportunities and triumphs.

They already have your corporate knowledge and a stake in solving your problems, especially if they share in your success. We suggest quarterly meetings with sales and sales support staff (i.e., everybody not in sales) to brainstorm solutions. They will surprise you with their great ideas!

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Want to Get Stuff Done? Pick Up the Phone!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 18:00:04 +0000

Personal business experience has proven to us that face-to-face meetings are the most productive for breaking the ice with a new prospect. The human face has at least 43 muscles that act in consort to produce over 20 expressions. If you see a negative one while you are meeting face-to-face, you can change your approach. But what if you are on email or a text and you can’t see those expressions? Well then you just type on – even when you have lost your prospect.

With face-to-face contact, you have the opportunity to establish who you are and demonstrate your undivided attention toward your prospect. You are building a relationship that may result in a purchase and perhaps long-term business in the future.

Next to face-to-face, we like video conferencing for the first meeting and any important meetings after that. It reminds everyone that we are all human beings, and allows us all to make adjustments based on physical and visible feedback signals.

The next best form of communication after that is, you guessed it, the telephone. Why? Because you can at least hear the other party’s intonation and sometimes the silent breaks, which in themselves will give you a big heads up as to their level of interest, understanding …or confusion. Again, you can make those crucial adjustments on the fly, giving you the chance to still win them over.

Our client Jeff Stevenson at VinoPRO is in what he calls, “the relationship selling business.” He likes to say, “We have mastered an ancient form of communication: the telephone!” He has the premier outsourced, out- and in-bound telephone sales company in the wine industry. He tells us that a phone number is worth 108 times as much as an email address.

Seemingly everybody is focused on email marketing. You know, coming up with the best subject line just to get folks to open your emails. Starting with tens of thousands of people just to get down to the 50 who will actually buy. And no matter what you say in an email campaign, it comes across as impersonal and the receiver knows it. The “funnel” is no fun!

So, how’s Jeff doing with his old-fashioned telephone sales? He is currenting building out his third call center, has 3 years on the Inc 5000, and has even made the Inc 500. Why? Because when it comes to luxury items (like fine wines), people want to talk to a real person, especially someone who they have spoken to before; someone who has demonstrated they have their client’s best interests at heart; someone they have a relationship with. In other words, it’s more personal, and people want personalized attention.

As folks who were in business for years before the information revolution, we had to rely on snail mail, faxes, and the telephone. And those ancient technologies worked! Sure, we are thrilled with the technologies that have made our lives easier since then – and we can’t live without them. But because we have had experience with face-to-face and live, real-time voice, we know what form of communication to use when and where. For instance, email is great to document what was said in a live call or meeting, but terrible at straightening out a misunderstanding. We rely on the records email provides with the string of correspondence that gives us a history of the conversation, but we hate the fact that you can’t un-say anything in email. No question about it, sometimes it better to just pick up the phone!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Best Source of Good Ideas Are Your Employees

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 17:00:18 +0000

Most companies, in their attempt to present the image of stability and security to their employees, will deliberately prevent them from knowing about the challenges the company faces. They fear their people will jump ship if they know that the company is facing difficulties. They put their people on a strictly need-to-know basis. This may keep them from jumping ship when times get tough because ignorance is bliss – till they get the pink slip.

We think there’s another way that may solve those challenges and even prevent the pink slip. We call it the “know-the-need” basis. The concept is simple. Your people can’t help solve the problem if they don’t know what the problem is.

With know-the-need you don’t have to go into every detail of the daily operation. It should never be a distraction. But it can be a very healthy team building and problem solving exercise when done with the right attitude. Think of your people as your most valuable asset, view them as such and never as “labor” or worse, as a “cost center”. They know your business, your policies, your procedures. They have an interest in seeing your business succeed, not just for their own security, but for their reputation. They want to work for a business that has its best days in front of it, not behind it. Changing jobs is traumatic and unsettling. They want stability. And they will participate to make that happen.

At Barefoot, we would have regular meetings between the non-sales staff and the sales staff. During those meetings the sales people would outline their challenges with the market, the competition, or with our own support. Folks who were apparently far removed from sales like accountants and receptionists would step up to the plate with suggestions. Many were completely off the wall, impractical, or down right crazy, but they all knew they had permission to say anything. Often, it got others thinking and innovative, disruptive, and practical solutions would bubble up. Everyone was thrilled when we hit upon something that worked. The folks who came up with the solutions were publicly praised. Others were thus encouraged to participate. It was actually great fun. We solved many of our biggest challenges as a result of some of these know-the-need brainstorming sessions.

In one of these sessions, our top sales person announced, “Well, we’ve got good news and we’ve got bad news. The good news is that we just got Barefoot into 400 stores in Florida. The bad news is that they put us on the bottom shelf.” This was the worse place to be in a retail set. Nobody looks down. To the bottom shelf, especially for an unknown brand. And if we didn’t make a certain number of sales in a certain number of days, we would be discontinued … forever! What were we going to do?

One person piped up in jest, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to go after the “foot traffic” then. Everybody laughed because our name was Barefoot. But then, someone else said, “Wait a minute! That’s not so crazy. Why don’t we have wine stained footprints decaled to the floor and lead the shoppers step by step down the aisle and turn them into our products on the bottom shelf!” it worked so well we used it all over the county. And that idea? It came from the receptionist.

Showing your people that you respect their intelligence, team spirit, and ability to handle challenges apparently outside of their area of expertise, gains you solutions, teamwork, and an element of trust. Let your people help you solve the problems that ultimately affect their jobs. You may be surprised at what they come up with … when they know the need!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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