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Sales meetings usually happen once
per quarter and are a fantastic opportunity to renew
acquaintances with your colleagues who, like you, normally
lead a solitary existence on the road.
The meetings can be very therapeutic because often you find that all the frustrations and annoyances that you've been experiencing in your day to day work have been shared by most of the others.
A typical meeting agenda is as follows:-
9.00am - Arrival and coffee
9.30am - Introduction
9.45am - Sales update (Riveting stuff if you're doing well, boring if you're not.)
10.30am - Coffee
11.00am - Individual territory reports (Mastery of the art of sleeping with your eyes open is useful here.)
12.30pm - Lunch
2.00pm - Marketing update
2.05pm - Presentation by a rep (Usually on something sales or product related to fill in time because Marketing couldn't think of anything else to do...)
2.30pm - As above
3.00pm - Tea
3.30pm - Any other business (This is when the real meeting starts.)
5.00pm - Close
You get the picture.
The choice of venue (usually a hotel) presents you with your first chance to moan. This will normally be about its inaccessibility, or the hour you had to get up to get to the meeting on time, or the amount of traffic on the road. The meeting always starts late because someone is delayed on the way.
The main substance of these meetings is usually sales figures year-to-date. The same old PowerPoint presentations hit the screen, and you have to sit through monologues about budgets, MATs, seasonal adjustments and lots of other things that mean everything to the person giving the speech, but absolutely nothing to anyone else. Those doing well are congratulated, whilst those lagging behind try to make themselves less obvious in their seats, and are encouraged by management to make the extra sales call to catch up.
On the subject of presentations, the audiovisual facilities provided by the venue never work correctly and the person responsible for this aspect is never around to sort things out. Presumably, he's already in someone else's meeting trying to find a new projector bulb or something. Everyone joins in to try to get it all working, pressing buttons and offering advice. Then you give up, and it's time for coffee.
If a particular product is not doing well a round table discussion will take place to analyse what the problem is and to see if there are ways to bring it up to speed again. The chances are that it is a 'me too' product with nothing to particularly recommend it to the users. You've been concentrating on the areas where you can make most money quickly, and haven't had the time or inclination to waste your breath chasing minimal returns for maximal effort. Product managers especially will disagree about this strategy and try to put a positive spin on things. You mustn't disparage the product or make the 'me too' point too loud or too often because this will be construed as you being negative.
Note that telling the truth in sales meetings is usually synonymous with being negative, whilst lying is seen as being positive. You discover this early on in your career as a rep and keeping your mouth shut is a wise skill to learn. Unfortunately, it's not one that I've been able to master.
N.B. This site looks best when viewed from a distance after drinking six pints of lager.