Too Much Time On Our Hands

“It was nice meeting most of you this morning.”

Even by the somewhat loose standards of the monthly sales meeting, this had to be one of the oddest conclusions to a sales pitch that I’ve ever heard. Nice to have met most of you? Which ones of us was it not nice to meet?

Wait, that probably would have been me. Because once and for all I’ve reached a point where I don’t want to be sold in my own company’s office meeting.

A couple of years back while at Century 21, we sat in pained silence while someone from a marketing company kept badgering us, “Who’s going to be signing up? Who’s ready for more business?” Our manager finally stepped in but about five minutes too late.

Why Are We Here?

There was a basic understanding at my last office. I came in weekly to collect my two everything bagels with cream cheese and for that bribe I would sit through whatever presentations were given. When there was birthday cake, I wouldn’t show because the terms were different.

Right now, everything bagels probably couldn’t drag me back in even if the meetings at the new office only are monthly. Because there needs to be a sufficient value proposition to make the meeting worthwhile.

When I was a broker at Schwab, we looked forward to our weekly meetings because it provided an hour’s respite from the phones. That was the value. When I became a manager, though, the meetings quickly became painful – thin agendas that used to provide an hour’s respite now were sucking an hour out of my week I could have used for far better purposes.

My former manager once tried bi-weekly meetings only to discover we didn’t have any agenda items. His solution? Weekly meetings. Why? Punishment for a lack of ideas to bring to the bi-weekly meeting. Guess how many agenda items we had on a weekly basis?

Time Management and Realtors

Basic reality says that every hour spent in an office meeting is an hour spent not working with clients, not prospecting (be it door knocking or blogging or whatever works for you) and an hour that otherwise could be spent doing something productive.

I’m one of the precious few agents in my office who has not attended Brian Buffini’s 100 Days to Greatness. It wasn’t intentional – I just happened to have clients in town looking at properties on the day the program was offered.

Here’s the thing … you’re supposed to send a lot of thank you notes. I get this. Do I need to spend five hours being told this? Probably not. Do I need to meet with my peers once a week to compare notes on how many I sent out? Probably not. I can spend that hour that I would spend in the meeting writing out thank you notes, if I ever got to that level of discipline.

Agents will sit through these meetings and many others all the while believing that the act of the meeting constitutes activity when in reality there’s no real estate being sold – just the latest, greatest methods of staying in touch with clients. Which is valuable as a concept but downright painful as a weekly/monthly sales pitch.

Dalton’s Arizona Homes Weekly Meeting

In lieu of the office meeting, I’m going to start my only weekly meeting with my marketing team – Tobey and Captain Morgan. The requisite stroking will take place … I pet their heads, they lick my hands and we all feel loved and valued. There will be food, and they will sit under my desk waiting for me to deliver it to them.

And even as Tobey’s sneezing on my leg and Morgan’s resting his lippages on my knee and there’s little left to discuss, I will be more productive. Because I’ll be sending e-mails and working on my websites and otherwise building my business while skipping all of the small talk that seems to extend your average sales meeting far too long.

Tobey and Captain Morgan don’t engage in small talk … well, not unless it’s time for night night and they want to get up on the bed.

Even that’s more productive than the weekly sales meeting.