As a Marketing & Sales person you would have faced issues of contacts in meeting? not able to get them online mostly .

1. Excessive meetings are a sign you have the wrong team

   This isn’t really in the “reasons to stop having meetings category” but it’s something to think about. If you have to constantly meet with your team on issues you may have the wrong team. Especially if those meetings are constantly to train existing team members on things the rest of your team (and/or the rest of the industry) just gets. You should have a team that’s interested in keeping their marketing/PR skills razor sharp because it is something they have a passion for.  Don’t tell me this is “pie in the sky,” that’s the answer of someone who refuses to realize their org may require radical changes.

   Meetings, in many cases, spawn busy work

   Due to the unproductive nature of meetings, many managers will feel a need to assign multiple tasks to team members during the meeting so they feel like something productive comes from the meeting.  But these off the cuff tasks and ideas are usually not well fleshed out or thoughtfully considered. They are usually just busy work stemming from the fact that people aren’t meeting for a productive reason in the first place. This isn’t always the case but can be with the wrong management team.

   Solutions:

   • Foster an open, friction-free environment where team members can access each other if buy-in is necessary on something. No need to gather the whole team all the time, encourage the people who need to work together to do so.
   • Ask forgiveness, not permission – most decisions can likely just be made on your own.  If your team forces you to meet on every little thing, build up the necessary trust to get out of this.  Good managers always appreciate team members who take initiative so long as they have a rationale for what they’ve done.
   • Have a standing time already on the agenda daily or weekly where everyone gets a limited amount of time to discuss items they need to go through with the team. Hold team members to this time, no one gets to run over.
   • Ensure all meetings have a clear agenda with specific items, and don’t add additional items to the agenda. Stay focused, accomplish what needs to be done, and move on.
   • Don’t feel as if you have to use a full hour or half hour blocked off. If you schedule an hour meeting but finish in40 minutes, give the rest of the team back20 minutes of their day.  Also don’t be afraid to schedule shorter meetings.
   • Use a project management system like Basecamp to organize your company – you’d be surprised how much can get done in a good project management tool instead of both meetings and emails.
   • Don’t bring excessive people to a meeting, it’s the equivalent of CC’ing a bunch of other team members on an email who don’t really have an action here.  Your team’s time is valuable, treat it as such.
   • Setup a shared calendar and make sure everyone is using it and it’s up to date.  This let’s you see just how much time your team is spending in meetings (plus stay organized). Work to cut down on excessive amounts of time any team member spends in meetings (unless they are on the account team and that’s their job).

Sometimes it may so happen and one should  not give up as the reason may be genuine.

If it frequently happens then perhaps the approch has to be different. 

Sometimes it happens

Dear Kapil,

Please explain your question more clearly in order to give you the best answer.

Regards,

Hany Sewilam

Yes, Excess Meeting kills valued time.

Meeting is necessary for planning of any thing and group decision for the execusion in which time frame to be decided for the same. But if we do meeting daily or weekly, it just kills time and divert focuse form the execusion. 

I had simillar problem in my previous company, so many meetings with senior people and many more reports for the meeting, which was taking my half of the work valued time. comparing to this in curent company, we have only meeting fixed on every first monday of the month where we discussed about action taken by everyone on the planned strategy, collect feedback and take decision if any minior changes required. so we get a month for the execusion of the sales strategy as per planning.

 yes i have many times,especiallyif  there is no well established procurement department.

but if contacting mid level and senior level managers  to sell them something outside the scope of the company's interests,it has been a problem.

one way to solve this problem is target the area and building entrance and exit with our advertising material,signs,......

meetings will never end. if you want to sell them anything just use creative and direct marketing focused on getting their attention around work area and not inside.

target the stop signs,traffic signals,building entrances,...etc.  always take them off guard.

it worked for us and hope it works for you.

it is unconventional but we must use every acceptable and legal way to get our message through