How to Make the Most of a Sales Meeting

As a sales leader in your organization, planning and conducting sales meetings can be one of the best uses of your time. Effective sales meetings keep your sales teams focused and motivated. A relevant, well-planned sales meeting has the potential to be some of the most productive time in the sales week, and it can be an event that the team is eager to attend every time. To get that kind of productivity and enthusiasm out of your sales meeting, you need to ensure that:

• The meeting is relevant to the sales team. If they are going to invest their time, they want to get something out of it.
• The meeting is participatory. Salespeople are always hungry for new ideas that work, and they are eager to share their own good ideas.

Tips for Sales Meetings

1. Keep meetings short.
2. Give team members some kind of tool or idea they can use in a sales call this week. Make certain they leave each meeting feeling better equipped to sell. This helps your salespeople feel that meetings create value and are worth the interruption.
3. Be consistent by planning the meetings for the same day of the week and time of day. This allows salespeople to schedule their time effectively. Give the sales meeting the same level of priority you would award a customer meeting.
4. Bring in guests to give your team an outside perspective. For example, have your IT person spend time reviewing features of your electronic customer contact system and answering questions. Bring in an external expert. Invite a customer to talk about their issues and to explain the benefits of doing business with you.
5. Remember to praise in public and reprimand in private. Sales people generally crave recognition, so be lavish in your praise. They also deal with a great deal of rejection, so don't add to it during your meetings.
6. Get your team members involved in planning and delivering meetings. Ask them what they want to do in meetings and what would be valuable topics to address.
7. Create a written agenda for the meeting. Send it to your salespeople a few days beforehand and ask for additional ideas. Then, stick to the agenda. Don't allow sidetracks to go too long unless they are critically important. Most sidetracks can be resolved outside of the meeting's allotted time.
8. Be a good listener. Encourage your salespeople do most of the talking in the meeting. This is your opportunity to hear what is really going on out there. Take notes to reflect on those issues later. Allow people an opportunity to vent some frustrations, and be ready to guide the conversation back to profitable discussion.
9. Consider conducting some electronic meetings, like webinars and ooVoo. These save time and money in travel. But keep in mind that nothing replaces face-to-face connections.
10. End on time.

Here is a sure-fire agenda for getting increased performance from your sales meetings.

Inspirational Open
The opening should be brief and inspiring. Utilize this time as a team building moment and opportunity. Consider asking for a volunteer to open each meeting and encourage that individual to stretch their "comfort zones."

Communication
Get this out of the way early in the meeting. Make sure to set and keep strict timeframes appropriate to the quality or necessity of the information reviewed. Use this time to cover schedules, new products, new processes, etc.

Goal Results Reporting
Set the tone by reporting on one of your own goal results. Have each person report, in a conversational way. If an individual hasn't accomplished the goal they'd set, coach them for insights as to what they learned and help them set a future commitment.

Customer Focus: Success Stories and Challenges
This is a good opportunity for people to tell their stories and share their knowledge. Keep the stories focused on business and avoid telling your own "war stories." Encourage listeners to take notes and use the examples they hear in their own sales presentations. Give people appropriate strength-centered feedback.

Training
Most sales meetings tend to be information driven and discuss hitting quota numbers, learning about products, and reviewing policy. Change this so that meetings help make salespeople more effective. Teach new skills. Share best practices. Demonstrate and coach, as appropriate.

Recognition
Most sales professionals thrive on friendly competition. Create team and individual contents. Publicly praise success. Remember to recognize people in sales support positions. Rarely does a salesperson work in a vacuum. Recognition often goes to the salesperson, without acknowledging the support team.

Commitment
Keep the focus broad-based and centered on individual needs. While revenue generating is important, activities drive results and are easier to control. By encouraging your sales team to set goals to build relationships with clients, you are driving future business.

Inspirational Close
Make sure the meeting ends on a "high" note.