I have been suggesting to anyone who runs a sales meeting that the discussion and debrief is more important than the content. This morning, I started a book called The Breakthrough Company. Author Keith R. McFarland's opening sentence in his "Acknowledgements" is "The Talmud says that learning is achieved only in company, so it only makes sense to first mention the people whose company made this intellectual journey possible."

Today, in adult education, we use small groups (nominal group process) to solve problems and generate ideas. People rarely resist their own ideas.

Last week, I was the keynote speaker at a company's annual sales meeting. The company is using The Automatic Sales Improvement Process and the VP of Sales, Kent, wanted his team to see me live for some reason.

Kent also wanted part of the meeting to be a discussion about what his 20 salespeople had learned during the last quarter they had been listening to the modules on this Web site.

I asked the salespeople to get into groups of 4 or 5 people. They gathered in the company cafeteria at round tables. I handed one person in the group a sheet of paper with these questions on it:

1.What idea from the Automatic Sales Improvement Process modules have you put into practice? What were the results? Successes? Misfires? Corrections?

2.What module or idea made you the most uncomfortable? You resisted the information or taking action on it. Describe the idea and why you think you reacted that way?

3.What is the biggest change you have seen in our business since you started? How are you dealing with that change?

4.Describe a successful sale you made last year and what you learned from it.

5.What problem or issue do you have that you would like to get some feedback about? Or, What question would you like to ask the group?

a.Give people three minutes of silence to come up with their question.
b.Then, let one person pose a question and see what answers the group can provide.

The group leader posed a question and everyone in the small group got to add his or her two cents worth to the discussion. That's it. The sole purpose was to share experiences with and learn in the company of others.

At the end of the 45-minutes, I asked, "Was that a worthwhile use of your time?"

Someone in the audience said, "It was a great use of our time because we got to talk about real issues and how each of us is dealing with them. It's great to hear what my peers are doing that works."

As an astute leader, you can see I have given you a powerful formula to get your salespeople to teach each other. Once you see how much energy and how many good ideas this kind of discussion generates, you won't want to go back to telling and teaching.

You'll become a facilitator. In fact, you can do what I did, go have a cup of coffee and let your people participate in their own learning. If they're teaching each other how to be better salespeople, how much better is that than you doing all training?

Kent and his company paid me to speak at their annual sales meeting. They didn't ask for their money back when I let them do most of the talking.