The first Thursday of each month features a “best of” X5 Management blog. The intent is to showcase and revisit some of our most popular blogs from the past. We hope you enjoy them!
It’s Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. and your business is about to start the most important meeting of the week: the weekly sales meeting! Once again, your sales team members are looking at their watches and waiting to listen to your weekly report – totally disengaged in the process. The sales team is unsure of the meeting’s purpose, benefit to them or how long the meeting may last. Perhaps you are trying to use an intimidation technique to motivate your sales team to produce better results? Perhaps you are dreading this meeting, but see it as a necessary part of your business? Whatever your strategy, there are some simple ways to give your sales meeting further structure while making it a lot more fun.
On a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate the effectiveness of your current sales meetings? With 1 being no effectiveness and 10 being perfect. If you rated the effectiveness from 1-7, it’s time to focus in on making some timely improvements. After you have rated your effectiveness, list the specific areas you should focus in on – meeting content, pace, objectives, participation etc. You need to pinpoint the areas you need improvement in, in order to move your sales team to the next level of excellence and success.
As the sales manager or CEO of your business, do you believe you are demonstrating strong leadership during this meeting? The team at X5 wants to help your sales team improve this process by sharing some effective tips for creating structure around your sales meeting and setting your team up for success.
X5’s Sales Meeting Cheat Sheet:
1) Agenda: Set a specific agenda prior to your sales meeting and distribute it to all attending team-members. Have time allocated to each agenda item and stick to it – always start and end on time.
2) Input & Discussion: Allow team members the opportunity to contribute to and discuss each agenda item if it makes sense. During a prospect meeting you want your potential customers input. The same goes for your sales team members during your internal sales meeting.
3) Weekly Wins: Celebrate and recognize your team’s performance by highlighting weekly sales performance wins. Personalize this conversation and allow members of your team to demonstrate how they achieved success that week.
4) Next Steps Conversation: Always come to an agreement with your team as to what the next steps are. This helps ensure accuracy, timeliness and follow through. Set consistent expectations for all team members.
5) Look to Motivate: Help your team understand the mission, vision and goals of the company and help them be a part of the culture. Share this information with your team or better yet, have them be a part of developing it.
photo credit: DUP Photos via photopin cc
