Fewer Meetings: how your marketing team gets more done

Meetings, meetings and more meetings - sound familiar? Your company has probably also spent a lot of time and resources in countless meetings that were not very productive. But how do you find the right balance between effective collaboration and streamlined, focused communication to best set up your marketing team and nurture your culture?

In this podcast episode, we'll show you how we've found our companies have optimally aligned the marketing team with business goals and the role meetings play in that process. Learn how to target valuable resources and turn your team into a true profit center. Get inspired by our proven strategies and meeting rhythm.

The full calendar

The challenge for you is to develop an enterprise operating system that requires fewer meetings without compromising corporate culture or team collaboration. A poorly structured meeting calendar can lead to a variety of problems:

• Long, ineffective meetings that inhibit productivity:
• A lack of structure, agenda, and preparation that throws the company out of rhythm.
• Poor follow-up and information overload that cause the company to lose focus on what's important.

In this exciting podcast episode, we share our experiences on how we reduced the number of meetings while increasing the effectiveness of our B2B marketing department. Learn from our successes and failures and discover how you can transform your marketing team into a high-performing profit center. Be excited and look forward to a wealth of practical tips and proven methods to get your business on track.

Midlife Entrepreneur Podcast

Subscribe to our podcast and join us on the journey of entrepreneurship

Practical experiences on lead management, product marketing and product management. Solutions from like-minded software entrepreneurs with their work-life balance stories.

Listen to the podcast, Less Meeitngs: How Your Marketing Team Achieves More

 

5 Meetings and a Goal

The solution, of course, is to establish few but efficient meetings where all participants know exactly the same course. We have had the best experience, with five central meetings in a specific structure and a common objective. First, about goal setting:

Objective Setting

• First, you should select a goal-setting framework (e.g., OKRs, SMART, Management by Objectives, Balanced Scorecard, etc.).
• Your marketing team should fit into your organization and have a mission with business priorities.

5 Meetings

• Bi-Weekly All-hands Meeting (for the whole company):
  • Participants: all employees
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Content: teams' progress, plans and achievements against company goals
  • Participants: management, team leads
• Weekly Management Meeting (for team leaders):
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Content: progress, obstacles, and plans for ongoing projects
  • Participants: all team members
• Daily Team Standup (for individual departments):
  • Duration: 15 minutes
  • Content: progress, plans, and obstacles related to departmental goals
  • Participants: team leader and individual team members
• Weekly or Bi-weekly Health/Speed Check (between team leader and team members):
  • Duration: 15 minutes
  • Content: review of team and individual priorities and personal development priorities
  • Participants: team leader and individual team members
• Quarterly or Half-year Performance Review (between team leader and team members):
  • Content: assessment of goal achievement using a traffic light system and discussion of future opportunities and development priorities

With these five key meetings, you'll establish an effective rhythm that keeps everyone aligned on common goals while focusing on business priorities. As a result, you can optimally engage your B2B marketing team and transform it into a high-performing profit center.

Doesn't that take up too much time?

Do you wonder if this meeting structure takes up too much time? Let's take a closer look at the weekly breakdown:

• Bi-weekly all-hands meeting: 45 minutes
• Weekly Management Meeting: 45 minutes
• Daily Team Standup: 15 minutes x 5 days = 1 hour 15 minutes
• Weekly Health Check with 4 team members: 60 minutes

Total, you're looking at less than 4 hours per week, including prep time. That's just one morning to effectively drive your entire business! This is where the key to efficiency lies.

Once this meeting routine is in place, you can even make other adjustments to increase efficiency. For example, health checks could be changed to a biweekly format or the duration of individual meetings could be reduced.

One possible approach would be to schedule most meetings on Monday morning to sharpen focus and productivity for the entire week. The bi-weekly all-hands meeting could then be held on Friday to celebrate the week's successes and progress together and to prepare for the week ahead.

It's important to find the right times for the various team meetings that fit your employees' needs and preferences. Developers, for example, might prefer the daily stand-up after lunch and schedule the Weekly Meeting on Wednesdays.

With this meeting structure, you can effectively manage and drive your business forward in less than 4 hours per week! This allows you to focus on the growth and strategic direction of your business while your team works efficiently and with purpose.

The Personal Learnings

By implementing this meeting structure, we were able to learn important lessons for working successfully and efficiently:

1. “Runners-High”:Consistency and structure are critical to effective meetings. It's all about establishing an effective meeting rhythm. A good rhythm leads to a kind of “runners-high” in the team – it runs smoothly, feels less exhausting because you know the way, and is also really fun.
2. Economic, central goal: It is essential to pursue a common economic goal and to emphasize this again and again. This common focus creates a strong sense of cohesion and a clear focus on the company's priorities.
3. Ownership for Team Members:Preparation is key to successful meetings, but you don't have to do it yourself. By relying on a PreRead or prepared slides, you ensure that all participants are informed and on the same page. It also helps to focus on priorities in the meeting. Topics that can no longer be dealt with, thereby, usually also lose importance.

We have invested a lot in making marketing teams leaner and more productive. An effective meeting culture also helps make management and you, the business owner, less important. This is critical not only when you're planning to sell your business, but also when you need to spend more time on strategic and important issues. By focusing on effective meetings, you'll strengthen your employees' ownership and engagement while helping your business grow.