It’s Monday morning. You’re either a B2B sales professional, or you’re a B2B sales manager. No matter, because it’s Monday morning, and time for the weekly sales meeting! Yippee. Hurrah!
Ask almost any sales professional and they’ll tell you how much they dread the weekly sales meeting. Ask any sales manager and they too will tell you about the angst they experience preparing for yet another sales meeting. A meeting they must lead and therefore a meeting they must prepare for and make meaningful and engaging.
This may well be the 800 pound gorilla in the office, as few sales managers would openly admit to their struggle to conjure meaningful, interesting, and relevant content week after week. It doesn’t really matter what vertical you’re in, because any vertical or industry offers only so much “what’s new” on a week to week continuum.
So what is a sales meeting supposed to be about, what is the objective?
The Collins English Dictionary defines a sales meeting as;
“A meeting held by a company or its sales department to discuss any problems or issues concerning the selling of its goods, products, or services”
Interestingly, if you look on-line for further definition of “sales meeting”, you would be surprised as to how little material there is.
Sales meetings are meant to be, above anything else, a forum where information is shared, achievements are chronicled and recognized, and finally, informative. Sales meetings should be a forum that provides nurturing and education for sales people, a meeting that results in them leaving enriched. Sales meetings should offer attendees the opportunity to up their game and capabilities, and from that, equip them with skills, competencies, and tools that will make them better sales people than they were before the meeting.
Unfortunately, sales meetings usually become stale and boring. Sales managers struggle with the “what’s next” and often just regurgitate the same old same old week after week. Sales people become lethargic, bemoaning the fact that they will have to stay awake through yet another sleepy hour.
So, how can you make sales meetings meaningful and interesting? Sales managers must prepare for about 46 sales meetings a year on average. If each meeting is an hour in length, then this is a staggering amount of fresh content to source.
So, why don’t you, the sales manager, try the following;
1. Prepare, Prepare, and Prepare – As a sales manager, you know from the start that you have these meetings looming. Were you the student that left studying for a test in university to the day before, cramming all night for the exam the next day? You probably already do an annual business plan at the start of the year. You map out budgets, quotas by territory etc. So why not establish an agenda of your up coming sales meetings? If 46 agendas overwhelms you, try 23.
2. Forecast, Numbers and History – The most common topics of most sales meetings cover history. What are the numbers, how many deals have closed, how many pitches were made. While all this is important, it is equally important to recognize that this information does little in the way of equipping attendees with information that will improve their game, and allow them to become better sales practitioners once leaving the meeting.
3. Outside Contributors – Who are the thought leaders in your industry? Are they internal, are they external? What about clients or competitors’ clients? Why not prepare a list of as many outside expertise contributors you can think of, and then invite them to participate in a round table discussion with your reps at a sales meeting? What about your own suppliers? Would they have something meaningful to share with your group?
4. Everyone Should Contribute – The weight of the agenda should not fall on the sales manger alone. Sales people should each be given a subject or topic to present at sales meetings. Mandate them to up their game, be inquisitive and knowledgeable about your product, your industry, and your market.
Have them present their findings on any of these topics week to week. Give them
sufficient advance notice i.e., let each person know which meetings they will be
presenting at well into the future, and make sure they submit what they intend to
present at the beginning of the preparation cycle.
In sales meetings that I plan and lead, I ask each rep to choose a medium. It can
be a magazine, a blog, or anything really. It just needs to be an original
information source that isn’t main stream and common -like the daily news paper
that everyone reads – and can provide interesting and meaningful insights.
Magazines like Forbes, Bloomberg Business Week, and The Economist come to
mind. It can be blogs or on line forums frequented by leaders in your industry or
even better, leaders of industries who are your clients. Of course, there are a
myriad of other sources. Make sure your reps follow through with what they
commit to follow, and have them share interesting findings at your meetings.
5. Problems Out of the Closet – Allow your sales meetings to provide an environment where sales people can be authentic about challenges they face, without the threat of being criticized or demeaned. Use the meeting as a forum where everyone can contribute to solutions to problems or challenges. Remember, if one person is speaking up, there are usually many with the same issue but shy to speak up.
6. Learning and Enablement – Do you retain outside vendors such as coaches, trainers etc.? As a value add, ask each of them to commit to a number of meetings to share or reinforce skills and best practices. Is there some new trick you can share or reintroduce about your CRM system that would make the sales reps’ life easier? Do they know how to use LinkedIn, DATA.com, etc.? Can you help them become better custodians of their personal brand development? If you can’t, who can, and when will they come to a meeting?
7. Department Leaders – Is the sales department’s productivity at all dependent on other departments like marketing, logistics, or production? Schedule these department heads to present at your meetings. If that isn’t appropriate, at least get them to engage in round table talk or Q&A discussions.
8. Ban all Electronic Devices – We live in a hyper-connected world, and we all know how easy it is to drift off to a smart phone, iPad or gadget. Make participants leave all gizmos at the door, unless they are a required apparatus for the sales meeting. Engagement and contribution is critical. Removing distractions that get in the way is equally critical.
9. Brainstorm – Now, I find this one funny. It’s easy to say “let’s have a brainstorming session”. In practice however, it’s not so easy. Again, it goes back to preparation. What will you brain storm about? Figure it out, at least a few weeks in advance. Put in in your agenda. Maybe week one it will be how to cope with a logistics snafu, week two could be about a specific objection a sales person or persons are encountering, etc.
In business, we plan pretty much everything out in advance, so why not our sales meetings? If you put the thought and effort into it, I think that you’ll find that more people will attend, fewer will zone out, and most importantly, those who participate will leave the meeting all the richer for the time invested, and better equipped to do their job.
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