Your account team meetings may be making your team worse not better

Here’s the truth your internal team account meetings probably suck.

Not for the reasons you think. This isn’t about how long they run or even the structure of your meeting. 

The challenge is most internal account team meetings are focused on one level with everyone leaving not feeling as if the time has been effectively used, or any new insight or perspective has been gained. 

I’m passionate about breaking the misconceptions in the marketplace that hold good leaders and teams back from achieving marketing beating results with their most important customers.

The more I get the opportunity to sit in internal meetings with my clients, to support, shape, solve and observe how they design for success. The more I see one consistent block that prevents teams from growing faster.

Most team meetings are designed to discuss activities not understanding root causes and generating insight.

What do I mean by this?

If more than 20% of any meeting you have is asking people what they have done, haven’t done, and should be doing then you’re wasting your meetings. 

Any of that can be done without you having to meet.

According to Doodle's 2019 State of Meetings report, the cost of poorly organized meetings in 2019 was almost $399 billion in the U.S. and $58 billion in the U.K. This is almost half a trillion dollars for these two countries alone -- a tremendous drag on the effectiveness of businesses.

What are the consequences for teams who suffer through poorly organized or low-level focused meetings?

According to the report, here are just three consequences cited most often by respondents:

• unclear actions lead to confusion (43%);
• bad organization results in a loss of focus on projects (38%);
• inefficient processes weaken client/supplier relationships (26%).

Whether seen or unseen by organisations there is both an internal and external impact to low-level poorly designed meetings.

How else can we approach our team meetings?

There are many opinions around the nature and frequency of meetings. Whatever your opinion we can agree that they are important.

Some of the most important times we have to drive results with our teams and departments will happen in our team meetings.

I want to offer something different for us to consider...

What if in our meetings, we STOPPED asking about forecasting? How many times a team member called a customer? What a customer said or didn’t say? problems you have? Or other activities ...

Instead, we changed our perspective and purpose.

Focus on helping our teams develop a systems thinking mindset

While you have your teams together focus on instilling ‘Systems thinking’ an approach to understanding the impact of their actions as it relates to other working processes, activities, and results they are exposed to.

Many will think of systems thinking as just a problem-solving tool or methodology but it is much more valuable and expansive.

An example of this would be:

Let's imagine, you're in one of your team meetings. You have two team members. One who has just created an amazing customer opportunity and one who is struggling to make traction with a very similar customer but in a different market.

There is a multiplicity of learning in both opportunities with each team member. For example,

• what were some of the core stimuli that created both results?
• how can we know or understand this?
• where can this be used to support/help/shape/serve/prevent with other customers?
• what things would need to be true to support/help/shape/serve/prevent this from happening to other customers?

As a leader or even a team member, moments like this are a fantastic opportunity to activate systems thinking by shifting the questions we ask in our meetings.

I’d recommend aligning questions based on three objectives.

• to help your team get to the cause and not symptoms of poor and successful results
• to help create a solution and problem-solving mindset focused on growth
• to generate new perspectives that enables everyone to get better and understand customers better

Here are 7 sample questions to go beyond the normal sales and account team meeting to help you and your team win weekly.

1. What one question haven’t you asked your client that would help you understand how we can serve them and help them better?
2. What one thing do you do weekly that yields bigger results than others?
3. What do you believe is the one thing we can do as a team to support each other's success?
4. What one skill will you be working on this week that will aid your success?
5. How can I help you this week to win in your customer conversations?
6. How have your current customer conversations changed the way you think about how you sell to and support your customers?
7. What have you noticed in your customer internal and external environment that we may need to prepare for or respond to this week?

Most of these questions are rarely asked by managers and leaders and definitely not by account managers.

Notice that the majority of questions encourage deeper reflection and collaborative thinking. 

You want to get your team out of negative thinking habits and behaviors that may not be serving them. 

You want to get them into a state of being customer-focused and results centered. 

All of these questions when answered offer a new consideration to what your team might do differently that week.

There is one more bonus question you must ask to ensure your and your team take action.

What will you do differently with your clients this week as a result of what we've discussed today?

Get them to write down those actions. State 3 clear goals and how they’ll measure their progress.  

In the end, you'll have one of the most effective meetings you’ve ever had.

Note: You wouldn’t ask every question each week. It is best to pick 2-3 questions to stimulate new thinking with your team. The point is getting everyone to think differently. 

Einstein was once quoted saying

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” 

I'd also say for customer results-driven teams.

"You will never get consistently better customer results at the same level of thinking that got you to where you are." 

This process of system thinking questions helps to transform your ability to think, understand, and discover the real things that make the biggest difference.

If you want results that make a difference, look at the current ways you design for outcomes, and challenge the existing structures and stop creating new ones.

How you run your meetings matters and you make a difference in them today.

Wishing you success in upgrading your meetings.

Jermaine Edwards

Founder of the Customer Mastery System and The Irreplaceable Advisory Group

P.S. You might also find of value a video I produced called '6 questions every leader needs to ask their account team'

#customerleader #keyaccountmanagement #teammeetings #customersuccess