By John Yoder

I don’t know a thing about you, but I’ll bet that people find it tiresome and grueling to attend meetings that include not even the smallest amount of fun. Yes, business meetings should be formal and geared towards accomplishing the agenda but that does not mean it should not be fun, right? Why not include sale meeting entertainment sometimes just to maintain that enthusiasm of your employees and at the same time, energize them for another round of work?

Having sales meetings are vital for the development of your company. During these meetings, issues regarding marketing strategies and progress will be discussed and if problems arise, solutions will carefully be thought of. It is therefore very important that these meetings are well prepared and will serve their purpose.

There are different things that you can do to make sure that your sales meeting will be effective and will be beneficial to you, your staff, and the clients. How? First of all, sales meetings should be well planned. Having meetings with no specific agenda, or not giving guidelines to the people who are needed in the meeting will make things confusing. In fact, it may even make the meeting useless. Why? It is because you and your team won’t have a specific and concrete idea of what to accomplish.

During the meeting per se, you must encourage your people to talk. It’s not all about you, the head, or any speaker. Knowing what your team has to say about the strategies, tips they would want to share with others, or discussing any difficulties or problems encountered. In this way, you would be able to interact with them, and at the same time, discuss business related matters.

Lastly, do not fail to acknowledge the effort given by your team. Congratulate people who have achieved their marketing goals, appreciate their allotted time for the project, and thank them for working on deals. These positive reinforcements will serve as motivation to your sales team.

Now, aside from the tips given, another way to keep your meeting productive and fun is by including sale meeting entertainment. Sale meeting entertainment will make old style meetings exciting, memorable, and at the same time, effective. There are a lot of entertainment forms that you could choose from. For example, hiring a comedian to experience sale meeting entertainment to your employees is a good idea.

Variety acts like mentalists, jugglers, and magicians are also another option. Interactive events and game rentals add to the many ways of sale meeting entertainment. Sales meeting entertainment will not only bring in the fun to work, it would also help build team work and camaraderie between your employees. It is still best to work in an enjoyable environment where you could laugh with your teammates, right?

For 25 year, Funny Business Agency has been a top resource for companies and event planners looking for expertise in the corporate entertainment market. With over 3,000 entertainers and events nationwide, Funny Business has provided entertainment for such companies as Legos, General Foods, Kelloggs, Pfizer, Honda Transmissions, Frito Lay, Iams, Proctor & Gamble, Perrigo and more.

By Olessia Smotrova-Taylor

It is a known fact that people tend to work harder and more intelligently for the people they like and care about. This is why building a team- putting names to faces and faces to names, so to speak, and adding personal spin to make people real and likable on your proposal team- goes a long way towards helping the proposal effort.

Any proposal requires a little or, more often, a lot of extra effort from a person- extra creativity, extra dedication, extra hours, extra resourcefulness… the list goes on. Anything that goes beyond the call of duty requires people to exhibit good will, and the fact that we do more for the real people we know and like is programmed in our psyche. Especially if there are no other incentives, such rewards to winning proposal teams or promotions to new positions on the program that was awarded, generating good will through team building is essential.

Here are five simple techniques you can implement on your proposal immediately.

Technique 1. Require the ENTIRE proposal team to be present at the kick-off meeting. This includes ALL the writers and contributors as well as the management. This is one of those non-negotiable things where management has to clear their calendars, and people dedicated to their day jobs on projects have to let their customers know that they have to attend the kick-off. This has to be a factor in your scheduling and budgeting.

Insist that people attend your kick-off meeting in person, since the first most important kick-off goal is to make people more willing to do a lot more for the people they like and care about. If a couple of people, no matter how much they try to clear their schedules, cannot participate in your meeting, you will need to plan to do a mini-kick-off session for them later, and also to speak about them in detail at the original kick-off. Prior to the original kick-off, request their resume, their information, or even their photo to show to the team.

If a physical meeting is not feasible, video teleconferencing technology is the next best alternative – even if it is as simple as using Skype. Also, don’t rely on just a phone line and emailed presentation. Instead, use collaboration tools, such as NetMeeting, LiveMeeting, and GoToMeeting. This will reduce the likelihood that the attendees will lose track of your presentation’s progress as you flip the slides, and get distracted. Make an extra effort to get remote attendees involved and speaking up, and insist that no one multitasks.

Technique 2. Start your meeting with ice-breaker introductions. Even if some people know each other, there is no better way to get everyone to liven up than asking each attendee to take one minute to answer the following three questions about themselves:

1. Their name and company

2. How can they best contribute to this proposal based on their experience

3. One fact about their lives or themselves they consider unusual, special, or fun.

Answers to the last question transform the atmosphere in the room. People start laughing, they make jokes, they ooh and aah. After everyone has shared their information, they stop being strangers in suits and turn into fellow human beings. You can get really creative with an ice breaker question. For example, you could ask, What are you most proud of in your life? As you invent more ice-breaker questions, important rule for this exercise is to not ask a question people would lose face or get in trouble for answering. Keep it light and positive.

Technique 3. Explicitly state that proposal is a TEAM EFFORT. Basketball or Football teams have the word TEAM used every day as part of their coaching, and being a team player is emphasized over everything else. Somehow, on many proposals this message gets lost, and people focus on getting a bunch of individual performers together instead of emphasizing collaboration. It is amazing that many of us spend so much time implying things, beating around the bush, and feeling like heroes, all without ever asking for what we need. Since the goal is team building, state it, and explain what it means. Team effort means clear, open, and honest communication; collaborative decision-making; seeking people’s input; collaborative brainstorming to capitalize on the team’s expertise; collaborative writing; and no pride of authorship.

Technique 4. Prepare in advance and pass around the Contact List to fill in missing data including home numbers, and a field stating “Availability During the Proposal.”This sets expectations correctly for when someone may be unavailable and therefore when they could be reached ahead of that time. Or, it enables them to show that they are busy working during the day, but are committed to donating their evenings and weekends to proposal work. This is especially useful when your proposal effort takes place in the summer, around holidays, or vacation seasons. This way your team will have a chance to plan their interfaces better. Another useful field is “Time Zone” if you have the team across the country or across the globe.

Technique 5. Feed your proposal team. There is nothing like food that conveys hospitality and caring for people. Proposals do cost a lot of money, but it is baffling that so many companies try to save money on food, while food is by far the smallest budget item in the proposal. As inexpensive as good food is, it goes a surprisingly long way to make people feel welcome and appreciated. There are many ways to avoid paying high catering fees, and to feed the whole team a gourmet breakfast at a third of the price that a caterer would charge. Just make sure that you get a small budget pre-approved from the start, so that you get reimbursed for the receipts, and then stop by a grocery store to get fruit, and bakery on the way to get bagels, pastries, and real cream for coffee, and you will feed a couple of dozen of people for under forty bucks.

Also, do not bring in the same old tired sandwiches and pizza for lunches that feel like a brick in one’s stomach. For the same price or cheaper, you can get chafing dishes from caterers, which are often advertised as feeding 10 but that can easily feed 15 or 20 – and they are WAY healthier and easier on one’s waistline. I also usually ask people whether they are vegetarians, vegans, Kosher, have major food allergies, or have major likes and dislikes. You will be asking people to sacrifice their personal time and energy, so this is the least you can do to make everyone feel welcome and cared for.

There are, of course, more advanced techniques for creating fun and team spirit, such as contests, spot awards, games, and ways to reward individual performance, but these five simple techniques will get you the most mileage. These are the basics without which cohesive proposal teams are difficult to pull off. These techniques don’t cost you much to implement, but their impact lasts longer than the proposal itself and creates better work environments and better companies.

By Evan Schweitzer

Congratulations! You have made the transition from being a sales rep – the feet on the street so to speak – to opening an office on your own. You are now an Independent Sales Office (ISO). Priority #1 is the evaluation and selection of the company you are going to partner with and represent and how they can help you grow your business.

This is no more evident than in the credit card processing industry. As a leading credit card processor, we see firsthand that the landscape for ISOs is constantly changing. Unfortunately, many ISO’s now find themselves in financially difficult times. Why? Because they either a) didn’t take the time to research their partner provider; and b) may simply not have known the right questions to ask. After all, picking the right partner is critical to your present and future success.

With this in mind, we are authoring and posting a series of articles on what to look for in an ISO provider in this industry. Following are questions pertaining to the sales, marketing and informational support that should be considered.

Key “Support” Questions when researching ISO provider partners:

· Comprehensive On-Demand Agent Portal

One of the most essential things to look for when selecting a provider is the information portal ISOs like yourself can access anytime online that contains all the information you need on a daily basis. Many providers today have nothing more than a simple database with minimal information.

To optimize your sales efforts, you need a partner who offers a comprehensive on-demand agent portal. For example, we provide our ISOs and direct sales reps with access to a proprietary ISO Agent portal where you can:

- Schedule daily appointments

- Track and manage submitted deals from stage 1 to activation

- Review commission breakdown in detail

- Access all training material / documents

- Receive a detailed breakdown of residual report

- Keep track of sales reps performance from month to month

Much more than a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, the ideal agent portal should also be able to:

- Submit merchant applications online to expedite customers through the approval process

- Provide batch reporting on a daily basis

- Flag alerts to customer service issues

· Marketing

When it comes to marketing, first and foremost is the quality and key focus of your prospective partner’s website. After all, this is generally the first place prospective customers go to. Is it a) professional and b) most importantly, is it merchant facing? Too many times, these sites can be geared more for ISO recruitment than new business lead generation. And obviously, lead generation is priority #1.

Other questions regarding marketing to consider: Do they provide you with compelling collateral that helps you communicate the benefits of your organization to your customers and prospects? Is this information downloadable in easily printable PDF format on their website to you? Can print and go when you need it? Do they supply pitch books which help you tell the story in a consistent, easy-to-follow layout? And, are the materials they do provide updated in an expeditious manner or are they using statistics from 1995?

· Training

Training is another key area for your success. Do they help train YOUR staff to grow and position you for future growth? How often is the training – daily, weekly, monthly, never? Let’s face it, having training sessions available on a daily basis, and not just once a month, makes for a most knowledgeable, more successful ISO. In addition, try to uncover the quality of the training and the credentials of the trainer? Do they have a dedicated full professional trainer on staff that has successfully trained thousands of ISOs and sales reps or are sessions conducted by an employee who does that it on his spare time?

If you can do you due diligence, follow the above guidelines regarding sales and marketing support, you should be able to gather enough information to pinpoint the right partner to work with you and help grow your business in these key areas. Please refer to other articles in this series where compensation and other significant areas are explored.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Evan Schweitzer (CPA) is the Chief Financial Officer for Federated Payments. Evan has spent the last 20 years aiding the growth of mid-sized companies and taking them to the next level. He is an expert in all things financial and works with the management team, ISO’s, and sales representatives to focus their efforts of profitable strategic growth initiatives. Prior to joining Federated Payments, Evan worked for Lipman Electronic Engineering (now VeriFone) and its global affiliates as Chief Financial Officer.

Federated Payments is a premier provider of credit card processing solutions and related merchant account services for small to medium size businesses within the U.S. and Canada. Federated takes a consultative approach in developing long-standing relationships with our merchant customers, Independent Sales Offices and Cash Advance Partners enhancing the way they do business. Federated offers a diverse suite of cost-effective solutions that include credit and debit card processing, equipment leasing, gift and loyalty card programs, cash advances and check approval services as well as its industry-leading Agent Partner Portal.

A friend of mine sent this to me today and with the new year just unfolding I thought it was a great reminder about just getting out there and doing it!! Will could have been a sales manager.

It does not matter if you are a sales manager in boston or a sales manager in manchester. It is all about putting your all into it. Will sums this up really well.

Enjoy and have a fantastic 2010!!

Best Wishes

Denise