When I first arrived at Infinio, I reflected on the types of meetings I 
attended, praising most of them for being pretty valuable.
That’s been consistent here over the 9 months that I’ve worked here. While there are certainly moments that are unproductive, there are rarely entire meetings that I come out of thinking “geez, what a waste of time that was!”
In fact, two meetings I’ve been attending recently are particularly interesting. One is the Sales and Marketing leadership planning meeting for 2015 programs, and one is the long-term roadmap & strategy meeting. Both meetings are attended by really smart, engaged people, and between the two of them, I get a sweeping view of the company going forward, which significantly helps me do my job better.
I went to a few other interesting meetings last week – the bi-weekly engineering iteration review, a review of survey results from a vendor, and a discussion about our website.
But none of those (nor the two mentioned above) were the most important meeting I had last week.
The most important meeting I had last week was with one of our BDRs. BDRs (business development reps) call the people we meet at tradeshows and online, and engage them in further conversations about Infinio. This BDR had some questions about our industry, product, and competition, so we spent ~45 minutes together talking through his (well-thought-out) list of questions.
The reason this was so important was that I got to hear:
- Which parts of our training were working, and where we were leaving things out
- What questions he was getting the most on the phone, and what things he did and didn’t know how to respond to
- What things we’re suggesting he say work, and which are a total misfire on our part
It was a view from someone who directly interacts with our prospects all day long. And that is the most important thing for me to be in touch with.