Three Word Meetings

A Simple Strategy to Engage, Inspire, and Empower Your Team

Lisa Thal

• Publisher: River Grove Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781632990969
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

Maximize Your Team Meetings
Creating great sales meetings week in and week out is challenging, but in Three Word Meetings, Lisa Thal helps provide some fun and interesting options to get your sales team motivated and inspired. By providing a full year of simple three-word topics that can be discussed at each weekly meeting, the author has created an actionable plan for improving the much-maligned gatherings. She has done the work for you—just add or adjust content as you see fit. No matter what industry you’re in, you will benefit from the author’s knowledge and expertise.

Chapter 1

LEAD THE WAY

We use “lead the way” in many different contexts. Let’s take a look at two of the most common interpretations:

1.Act as a guide in advance of others; go first to show someone the way: “He led the way on point as we made our way through the jungle.”

2.Be first or most prominent in some field or action: “She led the way for the US Olympic team with three gold medals.”

One of our great debates revolves around the question of whether leaders are born or made. It is obviously easy to track the success of leaders over time and ascribe such success to their schooling or training. But does genetics come into play? This was the great mystery until several years ago when a study was published by University College London.² It was the first time researchers could show a link between certain genetic traits and leadership. The study did not dispute the fact that leadership skills can be learned, but it was the first time a scientific study showed that leadership qualities could be passed down through generations.

When we ask someone to lead the way, we are making a number of statements about their character:

•We are saying we trust them based on their previous performance.

•We are saying we believe that they have our best interests in mind.

•We are saying that we know they’ve gone down this path before, and we are comfortable with their guidance.

•We are saying that we think we can learn from their experience.

•We are saying that we appreciate the fact that they have been successful in the past and we want to gain from those successes.

When I was managing a radio station, we were faced with a dip in our ratings and the onset of a recession. The combination was going to take us down a path I didn’t want us to go down. My sales team was compensated with a 100 percent commission plan. In the radio industry one rating point dip could mean thousands in lost revenue from the advertising agencies and lost commissions for my team. I knew we would have to work through the dip in ratings, and so I needed to figure out a solution to how my sales team could earn other commissions to offset the agency side of their business. I decided to lead the way on generating direct business, which was not impacted by ratings. The easiest way to do this was to show them how to do it, instead of telling them how to do it. I hit the streets on my own, as I had created a list of direct clients and met with them individually over the coming weeks.

When I started to quickly make sales, their curiosity led them to ask me what I was doing, so I happily played them the sample commercials (spec spots) and customized proposals I put together for these businesses, which I had titled: “Recession-Buster Programs to Grow Your Market Share.” If their market was going to have fewer opportunities due to the recession, I needed to find a solution for my clients to capture a larger share of the available market. I would have faced the typical pushback if I had shoved the concept on my team; but by doing it myself first and leading the way it was an easy conversion from customized programs. The sales team sold more, earned higher commissions, and the company’s annual revenue increased.

For You

•Think about someone who you believe to be a great leader and discuss the qualities you admire in that person.

•What are the ways you can serve as an example and lead the way in your current role?

•Do you feel confident when leading your team?

•How do you inspire others to lead the way?

For Your Team

Ask your team to share their thoughts on what the phrase “Lead the Way” means to them.

Next, expand the discussion using the following prompts:

•Think about someone who you believe to be a great leader and discuss the qualities you admire in that person.

•What leadership traits do you believe you have?

•In what circumstance has someone asked you to lead the way?

•How does the phrase “Lead the Way” play out in your client relationships?

•What are the ways you can serve as an example and lead the way in your current role?

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way,
and shows the way.”

—John Maxwell

2Tim Elmore, “Are Leaders Born or Made?,” growingleaders.com, January 25, 2013.

Chapter 2

IN THE ZONE

A popular phrase in the American vernacular, especially in reference to professional sports, is “in the zone.” NBA stars who are on a hot streak from beyond the three-point line claim to have been in the zone. Baseball players in the midst of a hitting streak tell how the ball seems bigger and slower, almost impossible not to hit, when they are in the zone.

Michael Jordan was once interviewed about what happens during particularly pressure-packed moments of important games. He said that whether at home or away, while in the zone he was almost in a place of total quiet. He became so totally focused on being in that moment of the game that everything else seemed to fall to the background or was shut out, including the noise of the crowd.

Being in the zone is actually a psychological concept known as flow. According to Wikipedia, flow is “a mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.”³

Being in the zone means there are three conditions at play:

1.We are solely focused on our goal and the actions needed to accomplish the goal, and it feels effortless.

2.We need immediate feedback so we can make adjustments to maintain the process and flow.

3.We must maintain our confidence through the process. We are energized by the entire experience.

Those who are frequently in the zone talk about feeling a sense of calm when all else around them may be chaos.

In the zone, or flow, is an excellent topic to explore with your team during a sales meeting. Every seller, especially those at the top of their game, has had moments when everything is going right, when every call clicks, when they might feel superhuman. They probably don’t know it, but they are experiencing flow, or the sense of being in the zone.

For You

•Come up with a “zone moment” you may have had, either on the job or in your personal life. How did it feel?

•Think about a typical day. What aspects of your job are most likely to be those that create zone moments?

•How can you create more zone moments during a typical day?

•What is happening in your body when you are in a zone moment?

•How do you think fear plays into zone moments?

For Your Team

Ask your team to share their thoughts on what the phrase “In the Zone” means to them.

Next, use the prompts you used in your exercise with your team.

Change your perspective and you can
change your life.

3“Psychology,” wikipedia.org, Accessed May 19, 2016.

Chapter 3

LIVE YOUR DREAM

Let’s be clear: There is a big difference between “living your dream” and the much-used phrase “living the dream.” We’ve probably all used the phrase “living the dream” at some point, especially in those moments...