There is a fine line between running a meeting with control and making sure everyone enjoys the meeting. When people enjoy the meetings they are more apt to participate freely.

Rather than making Elite Leads feel like a business meeting, I made the meetings feeling like everyone was surrounded by friends. The meetings were always productive, but the main things was they had fun. There was always a lot of laughter and there was a lot of business contacts exchanged.

The most difficult thing about a business meeting is to have everyone feel comfortable, relaxed and walk away from the meeting with enough leads to follow up on during the week to feel like the meeting was worthwhile.

It almost always happened that everyone received between two and ten leads. Some businesses are easier to think of leads for, while other might be more of a challenge. Our meetings were mostly business to business rather than business to consumer meetings that most other leads groups entertained.

That made it much easier for everyone to contribute ideas for each other. One of the IT people could introduce their new clients to the members who sold telephones, printing, office supplies, accounting, payroll and even the banker.

That why it made it so much easier for everyone to provide leads for each other. I also encouraged everyone to look at the list of the members prior to attending the meetings so they would be better prepared.