Treat a Sales Meeting like a Presentation to Clients
Productive sales meetings are an essential activity when running a sales team, unfortunately, though, these meetings are not a priority for sales reps. They’d rather spend their time on other activities such as calling prospects, scheduling appointments, or closing deals.
Sales meetings are often sabotaged with no-shows, distractions, or big talkers, but the good news is that there are so many ways to run a productive sales meeting.
There needs to be preparation and performance not only when you present to your customers but to your sales team as well. Executing a proper productive sales meeting will help you increase your sales team’s productivity.
Follow these four guidelines to learn how to run a successful and productive sales meeting for your sales team:
Have an Objective and an Agenda
Productive sales meeting should have an objective and an agenda. Setting a purpose helps keep sales meetings short and to the point. Remember that you are asking your team members for their time, so try to be as concise as possible.
If a regularly scheduled sales meeting approaches and no one has anything of importance to discuss, cancel the meeting. A meeting purpose can be any of these:
- Getting everyone up to speed
- Planning the next steps
- Setting and monitoring KPIs
- Resolving issues and tackling challenges
Don’t forget that if you don’t have an agenda, your sales meeting will just turn into a “conversation”.
Any agenda should include the objective of the meeting, the attendees, and detail the topics that will be discussed, decisions to be made, and the due date for each objective.
Ideally, a productive sales meeting should only have one goal, but we know that´s hard to accomplish so just make sure that it doesn´t go above 3 objectives.
Just before a meeting ends, make sure you agree what are each salesperson’s next steps and the objectives to accomplish.
NOTE: A productive sales meeting should be started with a success story that will help people feel that they’re part of the meeting.
Sell the Meeting
Sales meetings should be treated like presentations to clients. Prepare yourself before the meeting with an outline or slides that include what you’re going to say, show your sales team how you’re benefiting by sharing them this information.
This should be a rule applied to anyone who wants to hold a meeting or give a presentation at one sales meeting.
Having a sales commission tracking software like Blitz lets you track KPI´s and make reports in real time without too much effort.
During a meeting, you can easily pull out a laptop or a tablet and review all the critical information you would like to go over during the meeting. Blitz makes your work so much easier.
NOTE: If you’re leading a productive sales meeting, don’t miss an opportunity to give praise and recognition to your team by letting them know they’re appreciated and that they have accomplished their sales goals.
Sales Matters
Talk about what’s included in your sales meeting agenda. The focus of every sales meeting is sales, it’s fairly obvious. Any other subject like employees or parking problems should be avoided during the meeting. A sample meeting agenda can look something similar to this:
- Reviewing numbers from last week
- Planning for this week
- Answering any questions
- Other (assigning specific tasks, etc)
Track progress
Remember that a sales meeting should always end with a plan for action. If it doesn’t, it’s not truly productive. A few examples are:
- Get the client to the proposal stage
- Land on a defined budget
- Identify and book a meeting with the decision maker
Every time a meeting ends, your sales rep needs to come out with an achievable goal in mind. To make sure your sales team hit their activity goals, encourage them to use a checklist, processed document or to book slots in their calendars.
In terms of productive sales meetings, it will take time to change the concept your sales team have about meetings. We believe that the incorporation of these tips into your sales meetings will transform them into efficient and effective sessions.
Related Article: How to Increase Your Sales Team's Productivity