Although the year 2010 has already arrived, the Spring Festival is still the traditional Chinese New Year. Every year at this time, various company annual meetings begin to take place, featuring summaries, commendations, encouragement, networking, order placements, and target setting in all sorts of ways. Recently, I have been invited by several companies to add a training feast to their annual meetings. Here, I will talk about how training is conducted during corporate annual meetings by selecting some very representative companies.
The first category: Companies with distributors or agents spread across the entire country. After a hard year of work, it's time to thank everyone, and the annual meeting focuses mainly on gratitude. Of course, there’s no profit without getting up early, so the annual meeting can't be devoid of marketing elements. We need to summarize the achievements of the past year, commend those who performed well, thank everyone for their support, ensure that next year's sales policies will be more attractive, and help everyone earn more money. While we're at it, please place more orders or set higher targets for next year based on this year's results. This is called "progress every year." The dealer conferences of a nationally famous food company and a pharmaceutical company are like this.
The second category: Companies that have only a few flagship stores at their headquarters but franchises across the country or large regions. These non-direct stores look similar after unifying their CI (Corporate Identity), and the headquarters is responsible for distribution, sales guidance, and operational education. Although they are not the direct offspring of the company, they must maintain a consistent external voice. A brand-conscious company cannot neglect responsibility for their actions. Responsibility and mistakes are sometimes two different things; the mistake may not be yours, but you have to bear the consequences. An annual meeting organized for a large home textile chain represents this category.
The third category: The core team of the company. Whether it's a branch store or regional sales, they are all our own people. Even if the team is localized, it still belongs to the headquarters. Even if there is stock ownership or personal business involved, it still needs to follow the headquarters' direction. There is nothing in the store but our own products. You can say these people returning to the headquarters for the meeting are all employees coming back home. It's time to nourish them with some hearty soup, as it has been a while since we last met. Everyone gathers here, learns something new, improves themselves, gets motivated for the next year, and earns more money. The annual meetings organized for a national training chain institution and a clothing chain enterprise are like this.
The fourth category: Small-scale enterprises or annual meetings where the focus is on summarizing and commending. Therefore, the participants are mainly company employees, inviting some excellent dealers or suppliers, plus some special guests. With mixed bloodlines, the needs naturally vary. It's easy to go to extremes: either the goal is very single-minded, just having fun and learning a new concept is enough, or wanting everything—hoping to cover half a year's worth of courses in half a day, including professional ethics, leadership, execution, operational skills, marketing management, etc. Such companies are also quite common.
Management master Peter Drucker believed that the difference between managing a chain retail store and managing a Roman Catholic diocese is actually very small. These differences are mainly due to practical application rather than principle. Ten percent of the work difference is determined by the responsibilities, culture, history, and industry jargon of different organizations, while the other ninety percent of the work is almost entirely the same. Training in corporate annual meetings also has many similarities:
1. Large number of participants
The number of people attending the training at an annual meeting generally exceeds 100 people. For fast-moving consumer goods companies, the number is especially high, usually several hundred people. One company has over 1,000 dealers nationwide, and even after selection, nearly 400 remain. This is indeed a challenge for the company's conference organization and planning abilities. As for the speaker, without experience in giving large lectures, even the best performance won't come out well. In the past, I once saw a famous speaker standing silent for two minutes at the beginning of a presentation, sweating profusely.
2. Short duration
Training is at most one big meal in the annual meeting, not the whole thing. Corporate annual meetings often last 3-5 days, and the time available for training is at most one day, usually only half a day. Those in the training field know that the shorter the time, the harder it is to deliver the lecture, especially for slow-warming speakers. By the time they get into the groove, humming “Can you give me the time of a song,” it's already time to go eat.
3. Multiple needs
In the past, it was popular to pump people up with motivational speeches. Usually, it's hard to catch everyone, so now is a rare opportunity to collectively motivate everyone. Companies hope that after the training, everyone will be full of passion and enthusiasm, ready to tackle next year's sales voluntarily. But hold on, year after year of motivation has led to some aesthetic fatigue. This year, we should change things up a bit, right? Techniques and methods need to be learned, and currently, what's popular is practical combat. How can you do business without understanding marketing? When your business grows, you'll resemble Li Ka-shing. Although you may not have billions, there's one similarity—you're also a family business. How can you manage without knowing management? The world is talking about teams—how to lead a team? Everyone talks about win-win—how to achieve it? Leadership, execution—all these need to be covered. We are all cross-century dealers; how can we not learn? Regardless of how many hours, ideally, all these topics should be covered. We want to hear the most content with the least cost.
Does that sound familiar? Most companies are probably thinking along these lines. In most cases, corporate annual meetings focus on training dealers. Of course, no matter what, to give a good training session during the annual meeting, these aspects must be considered when designing the course. With so many people, small group discussions and team competitions that are suitable for smaller classes aren’t very practical. All companies hope the scene is livelier and more interactive, and creating an atmosphere is naturally indispensable. However, I always believe that the highest level of interaction is mental interaction, not just formal interaction. Finding their inner voices, their pain points, resonating with them, and then stimulating associations and thoughts—that's effective interaction. One-on-one dialogue or coaching, scenario simulation, short but meaningful games suitable for everyone are still good choices. Of course, a great lecture is the foundation of the entire training. If you're used to speaking in a monotone, it's time to change because hundreds of people's attention spans are easily distracted.
Absolutely don't let the company arrange a full banquet with too much content—it will definitely result in poor outcomes. Half a day can cover three key points, and explaining one thoroughly is already quite good. If everything is a priority, then there are no priorities. When communicating with clients, you can determine the priorities. Your menu can be comprehensive, but your stomach can only handle so many dishes. The shorter the time, the more important it is to accurately grasp the needs, and sometimes even guide the needs. Marketing emphasizes segmentation, and teaching is the same. For effectiveness, not all peaches are worth picking.
In terms of materials, the closer to the company, the better. Cases and insights related to the company's industry and their work are the most likely to capture students' attention. If you conduct a post-class tracking survey, 90% of students will basically forget what they learned within a week. What impresses them the most are often games, stories, and case analyses. So don't waste this part that can deepen their memory. Also, inform the students that knowing but not doing is equivalent to ignorance. Many truths we know are not necessarily actions we commonly take. Although following up after class is more the company's responsibility, from the perspective of influence circles, we still need to try our best to give more, leave them homework and exercises. Knowledge and skills can be taught, but determination and action depend on ourselves; others cannot replace us.
Having a team of forward-thinking, capable, closely cooperative, and well-trained distributors will be an important guarantee for a company's competitive advantage! How to make distributors change their tendencies to favor wealth, outdated concepts, short-sightedness, and disorganized management? How to improve distributors' management skills and operational capabilities? How to make distributors synchronize with manufacturers? How to make cooperation, growth, and win-win the main themes of both sides' relationships? Are there any methods to change? Systematic training by experienced marketing and management experts is an effective solution. Only by starting from the distributors' ideological concepts, progressively advancing to specific standardized management and improving sales performance methods, and fully considering the characteristics of the distributor group, using simple and vivid language combined with numerous practical cases, can distributor friends listen, understand, apply, and thoroughly learn!
This article comes from: Yipan Technology: Farewell to nightmares, the era of comprehensive budget management software arrives_7901 www.zp-nmg.com Leaders should understand emotional management_7665 www.zp-nmg.com "Stereoscopic channel model" will trigger a "butterfly effect" in the small appliance industry_7758 www.zp...