THE FATHER BLOG

For anyone in any type of sales profession, you are likely getting back from or preparing to head to your big “National Sales Meeting”. These events usually occur once (please) or twice (oh Lord, help me) a year. Zero times would be best but I guess companies have to spend some budget money and celebrate the “top performers” which can often mean people they favor or ones given the “golden” territories.

Now I could care less either way. Give me my annual raise for a job well done and then leave me alone to perform my duties. I’ve never been interested winning awards and in sharing a tropical vacation with a dozen co-workers and upper level management types. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again….a job is something that pays the bills and kills time between vacations.

But as a professional, I will keep a smile on, appear to stay engaged, be on time for all meetings, and generally fake it for a few days. It’s called being an adult.

For anyone reading this that organizes these types of events, try to make it tolerable for the attendees. We have to leave our families for a week to spend time in a destination (and it doesn’t matter where because all we really see is the airport and the hotel meeting rooms) so it’s already not enjoyable at all. Here is a brief synopsis of why we dislike these and it’s pretty spot on:

Why Sales Meetings Feel “Useless”

• Focus on the Past, Not Future: Meetings often concentrate on reporting past activities rather than planning for future improvements.
• Irrelevant Metrics: Discussions frequently revolve around “vanity metrics” or pipeline numbers intended to show busyness rather than drive real performance.
• Disconnect from Reality: Marketing materials often do not align with the actual, specific pain points and ROI questions that sales reps face in the field, leading to ineffective presentations.
• “Acting Out” Scenarios: Peer-to-peer role-playing during training can feel cringeworthy, unauthentic, and disconnected from real-world, high-stakes sales situations.
• Distraction from Selling: These events take reps away from their customers, practice, or family, wasting valuable time that could be spent on high-payoff activities.
• Meeting Recovery Syndrome: The mental fatigue and downtime caused by excessive, poorly run meetings can take up to 45 minutes to recover from, making long meetings highly unproductive. 

Today is the Women’s Hockey Gold Medal game with yet another rematch of USA vs Canada. These two teams are the best in the world, in my opinion, so it’s only fitting. USA won earlier in the Olympics, 5-0, and I think they still have a bit of an advantage today. But I don’t think it’s going to be easy by any means.

I’ll be trying to catch some of the that game today despite the early start time here on the East Coast.

Tomorrow is also the semi-final match ups in the Men’s Hockey bracket and if they both take care of business like they should, there could be another USA vs Canada Gold Medal game there as well.

I realize that St. Patrick’s Day is still a month away but it is certainly time to start prepping here at our house. We have had a big party for the past 20+ years and it just keeps getting better and better. It is without a doubt the day I look forward to most each year. Great food, great music, great friends and family, and definitely great whiskey!

Over the past several years of this event, I have made it a point to find a very nice or unique bottle of Irish whiskey that we all share a dram of during the party. Being a fan of the “Spot” whiskeys, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make this year’s special purchase the 100th Anniversary, 10 year aged Green Spot. I definitely have my favorites of the Spot whiskeys but none of them have every disappointed.

So I found this bottle for purchase from England. It took a very interesting route to get from there to NJ while flying 3000 miles past me to California….but it eventually made it’s way to my bar after about 3 weeks. It will now rest comfortably among the other bottles until our party. Has anyone tried this one yet??