Meetings are essential in the running of a successful sales operation but often thought of as an unnecessary pain in the back side. There are several ways in which they can be sabotaged for example; no-shows, twiddling of the thumbs, people playing on their phones, big talkers promising the world and the others hiding or counting down the clock.
Meetings have long been considered a hindrance in the business world eating into a sizable chunk of a company’s most valuable resource – time. The good news is, there are still ways to conduct productive sales meetings. If you adopt the following tips you’ll increase your chances of promoting your sales objectives in sales meetings and ultimately spend less time in meetings and more time selling.
Find the purpose – Why are we here?
Productive sales meetings will always have purpose. What’s the desired outcome?
Get with the agenda – If it’s not important enough to create an agenda, is it important to attend a meeting?
If you don’t have an agenda the meeting will just turn into a conversation where the most dominant sales people speak. An agenda should always go beyond talking about the obvious, for example;
Sharing success – Who’s winning?
One great and straightforward way to kick off a sales meeting is to encourage the team to share successes they’ve had since the last time the team met. This will reinforce a sense of optimism and will help people feel like they are part of the meeting instead of being just an observer. If there are negative topics to cover this will always help to put problems into a wider context.
Embrace the power of recognition and praise – Who’s ready for encouragement?
Everybody loves praise and acknowledgement, especially sales professionals. There is more than just circumstantial evidence that recognising excellent work and saying thank you is a great idea. Research shows that when sales managers use praise their employees are overall more productive. So, in that case if you are leading a meeting, don’t miss that opportunity to motivate your team by letting them know how much they are appreciated.
Don’t allow the meeting to go off course – What were we just talking about?
It’s best that everyone chips in to make sure the meeting stays on track – not just the boss. To prevent team members from trying to take over follow these tips;
If your trying your best and you still can’t keep meetings on track and on time, there is one last and very successful option, hold meetings at the end of the day. If you were to schedule a meeting half an hour before your sales team are supposed to knock off, this may be your saving grace that prevents them from straying off topic.
Confirm the next steps – Ok team, who is taking control of what?
Recap and confirm before leaving the room.
Meetings are a place to talk about things you’re planning to do later. With this in mind, just before a meeting ends, make sure you agree on each person’s next steps and ideally these steps should be concretely linked to activity goals. Leaving the meeting, each salesperson should be clear about the decisions made and the deadlines set during the meeting that will have an impact on their activities.
Tracking your teams progress – How are we tracking the decisions and outcomes of the meeting?
You should always check on progress being made between meetings, either using a central checklist, process document or your CRM. SET’s drag-and-drop opportunity pipelines provide a simple and engaging way for you and your team to keep your opportunities progress up to date. As each sales person’s objective was properly defined in your last sales meeting, you know the goals and deadlines to track. A key goal in tracking steps is to identify any roadblocks or other issues impeding progress of individual people or the team and address any problems that can protect your sales goals.
To make sure your sales team hit their activity goals encourage them to block out time in their calendars. This will allow them to manage multiple demands and their time more effectively which will aid focus and your team will achieve more.
All aboard the sales train…
SET is all about sales productivity. Our sales CRM software helps you focus on the most vital parts of your business, so you can make more profit, faster. Software alone can’t transform your sales team into an efficient and effective sales machine. With meetings it takes discipline and leadership to improve structure, order and quality. Start incorporating our sales tips into your sales meetings so that they become habits. This will be a strong step in the right direction in gaining control over your sales meetings.
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