Your regularly weekly sales meeting (you do have one every week don’t you?) is the perfect time to pump-up, inspire and motivate your sales team.

One way to do this is to start the weekly sales meeting with a very short round of Good News, ask each sales person to share in less than 30 seconds something good that’s happened to them since the last meeting. Sharing good news is a great way to kick off your meetings and keep the tone upbeat.

Another idea is to call out sales people on some good achievement or activity that you’ve noticed and ask them to share some details. For example “Hey Simon, last week you finally cracked the ABC account a secured first order, tell us about how you did that.”

Try these two ideas and you’ll find that your team leaves the sales meeting feeling like they are appreciated and they’re making a positive and contribution to your company.

Reinforcing sales skills is vitally important for any team regardless of how effective and productive the team is currently. For any sales team there is always room for improvement. It is part of the role of the sales manager to identify areas that require improvement. Role practice is one of the best ways to impart new sales skills and encourage team participation.

Here’s a good example; select two members of your team and pick one of them as the prospect and the other the sales person. Instruct the “prospect” to present a particular objection, e.g. “We are 100% happy with our current supplier” and get the sales person to utilize their objection handling management skills to overcome the resistance. The remainder of the team should observe and evaluate so they can offer a constructive view of the techniques that were used.

The role practice can also be used to build questioning skills, the presentation of your company’s value proposition and any of the other core components in a sales call. One thing to bear in mind, ensure the topic is very narrowly focused so that it can be covered in a short period of time.

Include this role practice method as part of your weekly sales meeting. You should be able to set the scene, conduct the role practice and gather feedback in about 10-15 minutes.

Keep up the weekly rhythm and you will transform the skills set of your entire team.

It’s that time when the sound of resistance are the same as last time a sales meeting was scheduled:

“There is too much to do!”

“Why do we bother to have a sales meeting?”

“We don’t get anything out of it”

“It is a massive waste of time”

These objections are continuously heard.

The sales meeting is one of the basic tasks of good sales management. They enable communication to the sales reps, interaction between the sales manager with sales people, and build collaboration within the team.

If they are so critical then why are they dreaded among most sales people?

Because they are boring.  There is no value add; the sales manager typically likes to listen to themselves talk and there is no participation from the team and they happen in an irregular manner.

There are 4 keys to having a success sales management meeting:

1. Consistency – The rhythm of weekly meetings is critical to the success so have them at the same time, same day and same place every week. This expectation of having the sales meeting requires you (the sales manager) to be prepared.  It forces the sales people to be accountable every week.

2. Create a standard agenda – have three basic items each sales team member needs to report to the group each week:

Sales update – Everyone has to communicate what they sold that week.
Activity update – How many customer interactions did you have?  What are you working on?
Pipeline update – Each rep needs to discuss how much they have and in what sales stage and are they following the sales process?  Do they have enough to make their quota?

3. Participation – Sales meetings are boring because sales people don’t interact. It’s the boss droning on about how we need more sales, you guys don’t sell enough etc, etc.  Change the mentality by involving the reps in an interactive exercise.  If nothing else, do role practice.

4. Value Add – When preparing the meeting, ask yourself:  Is there something in the meeting that my sales rep can use to sell more today.

Having regular great sales meetings are critical to the success of the team.

Many Sales Managers need help in running the team sales meetings, they understand that running a compelling sales meeting is critical, but often fall into running meetings that don’t inspire, motivate or even engage their sales team.

Here are 4 common mistakes most Sales Managers make;

Sales meeting mistake No 1 – Dragging them on too long
The longer the time period, the more difficult it is to maintain interest and attention from the attendees. Consider what you want to cover in the meeting, and how long that would take.

Sales meeting mistake No 2 – Too much ‘whining’
Your sales team are all together in one place and some salespeople will also have their favourite whine topics, such as “the company doesn’t do enough marketing” or “our prices are not competitive compared to…” You need to be prepared for it and aware of the signs so you can deal with it as soon as it happens.

Sales meeting mistake No 3 – Lack of preparation
If the meeting is not properly planned beforehand the meeting can be a waste of time to all the participants. Before the meeting think about your outcomes what you want to cover and how to get your message across in the most effective way.

Sales meeting mistake No 4 – Not challenging the team
Another common mistake Sales Managers make is not to challenge the team, particularly around their sales pipeline or prospecting lists. Too many salespeople don’t take these important activities seriously enough.

The sales meetings should be about motivating the team and helping them deal with their current sales challenges.

Here are 5 good tips to run successful sales meetings. Focus on a section at every meeting you will start to see better results and enthusiasm of the sales team.
 
1. Market intel – the best sales people are constantly on the lookout for an advantage through learning about the “competitive landscape”. 
2. Education – The best sales teams are always honing their approach to the market, the tactics that are getting the best results, and sharing what works with the sales team. 
3. Accountability –  Posting key metrics takes advantage of the sales teams natural competitiveness, NOBODY wants to underperform in front of their peers. 
4. Inspiration: Stories, articles and experiences from the sales team having success reminds everyone of what is possible and attainable. Too often we focus on shortcomings and not often enough do we set our minds on what we want. Remember focus on what you DO want, not on what you DON’T want. 
5. Rotate the Leadership – Keep the same format, but have each person on the sales team take a leadership role in running it. Removes the “sales vs. sales management” gap that may be in your team and injects new ideas and topics. 
 
Applying elements of each of these 5 ideas will transform your meetings, and bring powerful energy to your time together. 

All top flight athletes go through a regular warm up routine before they train or compete, it helps get their muscles moving and their mind focussed. It’s an absolute no-brainer, right?

Think about your own experience of playing sport or doing any physical activity. You probably have a routine you go through that includes;

• getting your gear together
• checking the venue, time and facilities
• doing a series of stretches
• getting in the right mental head space and trying to focus on what you’re aiming to achieve
• motivating yourself to perform
• being 100% ready to go when the event starts

You want to maximise your performance while playing sport, it’s important enough to have a routine and correct warm-up for, so here’s a few questions for you:

• What do you do in the 5 minutes before your sales meetings start?
• Do you warm up or just jump straight in cold and hope it’s all going to be OK?
• What check-lists or routines do you have to make sure your sales meetings are successful every single time?
• What would a great sales leader do to make sure every single sales meeting had enormous value and engaged the sales team?

Try this idea of sharing at least one positive war story at every sales meeting. The manager should pick the story several days in advance and then give the sales person some written general guidelines, like:

• Tell us how you made the first contact.
• Tell us the customer’s situation.
• Who was the competitor and what did they do right and what did they do wrong?
• Tell us what you think you did right and wrong.
• Tell your story in 3 -5 minutes. (Try to keep stories in less than five minutes since it’s entirely possible to have a boring war story if it goes on too long.

Sales meetings are an important tool for helping you to keep your team’s performance on track. Effective sales meetings don’t just happen, and improving your meetings isn’t just a case of ordering drinks and a plate of muffins.

Here are some handy tips on the frequency and content for you to conduct effective sales meetings so that you and your team get the most out of them.
How often should sales meetings be run?

Generally in most sales environments, it is important to have a weekly and a monthly sales meeting as a minimum. This certainly provides a strong foundation and can be supported effectively by individual and regular sales coaching.

The weekly meeting – should focus on:

• Go through previous week’s results.
• Share in successes of previous week.
• What do we want to achieve this week?
• Key actions required before next meeting.

The monthly meeting – should focus on:

• The previous month’s results.
• Share in successes of previous month.
• What sales results do we want to achieve?
• How do we go about achieving them?
• Changes, improvements and innovations.
• Sharing of knowledge and information (individual presentations; could include
  product, process, market, customer info).
• Review current sales objectives, confirm if still relevant and adjust if appropriate.
• Re-link focus to overall sales goals, strategies and performance targets.
• Key actions required before next meeting.

Remember successful meetings require a range of skills, a disciplined approach and an effective leader.

In his recent book “The Lean Startup” Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author Eric Ries writes about launching products with the smallest set of features to please a customer base, testing reaction and then making required course corrections (pivots), to dramatically improve the odds for success.

According to the book there are 10 types of pivots, each designed to test the viability of a different hypothesis about the product, business model, and engine of growth. Applying the same thinking about sales meetings here’s my top 3 options for using pivots when thinking about your sales meetings:

1. Zoom-in pivot – What previously was considered a single feature in a product becomes the whole product, highlighting the value of focus. Is there too much in your sales meetings? Could a single part of your sales meeting become the whole focus of your sales meetings to make them work much better? Could you break your regular sales meetings into three parts each with a specific focus.

2. Zoom-out pivot – The reverse of the above situation, where a single feature is insufficient to support a customer base. What was the whole product becomes a single feature of a much larger product. Are your sales meetings too skinny on content? Is there some more content, agenda items, training or metrics that need to be added for them to work?

3. Technology pivot – This is when a start-up discovers a way to achieve the same solution by using a completely different technology. This is really relevant if the new technology can provide better price and/or performance to improve competitive positioning. Is there some new technology, system or tools you could use to improve your sales meetings?

Every entrepreneur faces the challenge in developing a product (or running a sales meeting) of deciding when to pivot and when to persevere. Ask most entrepreneurs about decisions to pivot and they will tell you that they wish they had made the decision sooner.

What does Alistair McMahon have to say about running great sales meetings….