Page 164 - How To Sell Yourself

Selling Yourself in Meetings 163 move, act and react, and the way you relate to the group can all
either spell success or failure for the meeting.
In a more formal situation, there’s usually a certain distance between you and your audience.
In a meeting, that distance is considerably diminished and, from the moment you walk into the room until the moment you walk out, you’re on.
The meeting as communication
Basically, there are five types of meetings, most of which have overlapping functions and purposes:
• Information meetings. These are intended to deliver or exchange information. The boss has announcements to make. A federal agency wants to tell interested parties about upcoming regulations. The CEO expects the depart- ment heads to brief each other on the recent progress and plans for the next calendar period. A manager wants to exchange thoughts with other managers.
• Decision-making meetings. These are meetings in which a group negotiates or builds a consensus in order to arrive at a decision.
• Instruction meetings. These include training and educa- tional programs of all kinds, meetings to issue directives and assignments, and events intended to result in change or action on the part of the participants.
• Motivation meetings. People’s hearts and minds have to be won. They must be moved to respond. Buy this soap. Stop smoking. Improve your sales by learning these new techniques. Use these manuals and do better. Give us your support. Join our team. Whatever the subject area, these are meetings to persuade, cajole, motivate, inspire, and induce a desired action.
• Social meetings. If there is a meeting that’s purely social, it’s often held to reward certain team members for excep- tional performance. But more often than not, the annual meeting or team meeting is held with the social aspect as just one of its purposes. The Internal Revenue Service has seen to that by requiring an organization to have some