5 Ways To Improve Your Sales Meetings
Ask yourself this question and answer it honestly, does my team actually enjoy our sales meetings? Is it one of the most valuable ways they spend their time each week? Do they leave feeling supported and filled with ideas to improve?
In fact, ask yourself this question:
Are you running a sales meeting that serves the YOU, the sales manager rather than serving your team?
Here are 5 steps you should follow to avoid destroying your team’s morale at the next sales meeting.
Rule #1 — Don’t Spend Too Much Time Talking About Sales Activity
If you find your sales meetings start with a ’round the table’ announcement of sales activity from each person, you’re not getting the most value for the time spent by everyone in the meeting.
Your CRM, set up with the sales reporting that are important for you to measure, already tells everyone on your team exactly what’s going on in the pipeline.
Do not waste time in your sales meetings discussing the numbers, otherwise it becomes a slug fest. Each member of the team can make themselves familiar with the numbers by running a report before the meeting.It’s called being prepared. The meeting should never be a reporting exercise to the manager.
Rule #2 — Have An Agenda That Focuses On Shared Learning & Improvement
First of all, give each member of the team an opportunity to present the lessons learned over the previous week.
Have the owner share their feedback and give everyone an opportunity to ask questions about it. The goal here is to find ways to embed learning that makes everyone better. For example, if a team member has earned results with a new way of making contact with prospects, discuss the idea as a team. Does it need further testing? Can it be improved upon? Is it something that should be rolled out across the sales team? What’s the best way of implementing the change?
To avoid blank faces at the meeting where people can’t remember the key lessons learned from the previous week, have a central place where each member of the team can headline their learning and document it immediately so it’s ready on the agenda for discussion.
Rule #3 — Allow Time To Chat About Challenges
Next, give each member of the team an opportunity to chat about any challenges they’re facing in their role and allow the rest of the team to share advice. You’ll find members of the team may have already experienced similar challenges, and brainstorming together generates some great ideas.
Hitting sales targets are never easy. It’s helpful to create a world where sales reps give each other advice on what they can do to reach their numbers, rather than sitting around presenting numbers.
It can feel like the loneliest place when you’re not on top. Whilst you can’t get away from individual targets and pressure, you can create a really supportive environment where reps feel like they’ve got a team of people to lean on when they need advice.
Rule #4 — The Meeting Should Be Owned By The Team, NOT The Manager
As the manager, be part of the conversation, but don’t make yourself the central focus where everyone is directing questions and answers at you. That’s how you create a teacher/student environment. I think it’s best when the team shares the meeting agenda and to rotate who is sharing it each week. It gives a real sense of ownership to the team. Make it their meeting, not yours.
Rule #5 — Communicate The Goals For The Meeting And Get Feedback
If your goal isn’t to get a report on the sales pipeline, then what is it?
The goal of the sales meeting is to:
- Create an environment to share and learn from each other
- Implement ideas that improve how you sell
- Create a supportive sales team environment
Ask yourself, are you delivering in those three areas? Ask the team. Send out a quick survey each month asking them to rate the effectiveness of the meeting based on those 3 things, or chat with them one-on-one to get feedback. And always remember to ask for ideas on how it can be made better.
