Top 10 Ways To Improve Your Sales Meetings
Do your sales meetings produce anything of value? The majority of time spent in a sales meeting is usually dedicated to updating everyone on what the sales manager does. It takes much planning to get those meetings to happen, so much that it may not be in the salesperson’s best interest. They’re less motivated going into these meetings than they were before attending.
Luckily for you, BBC Member, we’ve produced a list of the top ten ways to improve your sales meeting. Remember that the first step is completing any of these fantastic courses. The second possibly more critical step is to take action, even if it’s imperfect action.
Sales meetings usually take numerous forms. Some sales meetings are incredibly motivating and inspire your team to get caught up in the process of launching new sales opportunities. However, sales meetings are often counterproductive and waste much time by distracting your team from the work they are supposed to be doing.
Having your remote sales team members in sync with what was discussed during a meeting is critical for the success of your organization. A recent survey revealed that 36% of workers would be less effective if they had remote sessions. To keep your remote team in line, you should use the latest technology to keep them up-to-date and focus on what was discussed at the last meeting.
Everyone involved must be on the same page if you are responsible for running sales meetings in your company. You don’t want to waste time while your valuable time is wasted with unproductive meetings.
Let’s discuss the top ten ways to improve your sales meeting.
Be Consistent
It is helpful to have your sales meeting at the same time each week so that your team can get into a routine. The more you have a sales meeting, and the more likely your team will attend. If your team only consists of experienced salespeople, you could reduce the number of times you hold sales meetings back to twice a week.
It is also essential to have an example agenda template that covers the same topic areas each time. Of course, switching topics randomly or backtracking when a new issue comes up for discussion may be necessary. However, having the agenda written before the meeting enables the group to stick with what has been discussed and ensures that all attendees are on the same page—avoiding going into too much background information when it is unnecessary.
Think of a time-saving agenda
Sales meeting time can be cut in half by printing a card with the meeting agenda and outlining the day’s follow-up activities.
Planning before the meeting will make it easier for you and your team. Thinking ahead, writing out specific talking points to highlight, and taking note of what matters most in the meeting cuts down on questions, tangents, and confusion. This serves as a way to take some responsibility away from your team by leaving them with what they need to bring to the table.
If you want to contribute technical content, it’s essential to let your team know in advance. If you’re submitting content specifically on data or target marketing opportunities, be sure to specify so.
The sooner you send your meeting agenda to attendees, the better. Sending your meeting agendas a few days in advance gives your attendees enough time to get any questions they might have answered and provided ample opportunity to avoid minor back-and-forth discussions at the event on program day.
Your attendees may know precisely what they are getting into with an actionable agenda. This means you can cut your meeting times by up to 80%. The agenda details the schedule of the meeting, including why it is being held and where it will be taking place.
Set up expectations
If you struggle to get sales meetings on track and they tend to go long or into chaos, you may consider restructuring how you run them all together. This means: writing out a clear plan and setting appropriate expectations beforehand. If you want to be efficient, set these expectations with your team.
Number one, Block off time for team meetings. If a weekly meeting is essential for you, remember to schedule it for a duration long enough to make time for your meeting without causing your productivity or engagement to drop off. An essential expectation is to set aside time for a weekly meeting. Usually, meetings are 15 – 30 minutes because productivity and attention tend to drop off after the half-hour mark.
Number two, Limit the amount of time you spend in your meetings. Don’t over-schedule. You want to ensure everyone has their voices heard and avoid intimidating or burdening people with too many tasks. It will keep things moving and prevent people from getting overwhelmed. Schedule regular “breaks” at five-minute intervals, so you don’t get too involved in one topic and lose your audience’s interest.
Number three, If you feel you’re getting off topic with your sales team, try having an open, honest, honest conversation. Ask questions about how the conversation feels to them. Empathy fosters a culture where team members are comfortable providing feedback on their time.
Number four, With Google Meet conversations, different standards of etiquette apply. Prioritize and establish ground rules for the call with your team. This includes muting yourself, testing audio and video connections, and making calls with a phone if your wifi goes down. This should help prevent unnecessary anxiety associated with your conversations being cut off or anyone feeling bored during the call.
Number five, Run prep or research for upcoming meetings before the meeting. Using specific tools can help you make this process easy, so your team has a verbal check-in during each session to monitor activity on their activity feed.
You can frame expectations as a net positive for your team. You can also inform them that these expectations will get your team collaborating without wasting time in meetings, rather than constantly being interrupted by meetings.
Be punctual
First, Your company’s time is valuable. On-time arrival helps reps to regain lost prospects and move deals through the pipeline.
Second, your reps must respect your customers’ time. If they are late to meetings, you can be sure they will lose deals. By following a schedule at sales meetings, your team creates a culture of punctuality. That same punctuality becomes second nature in the field and convinces prospects and customers of the importance of on-time appearances with your team.
Make it more engaging
If you have questions or doubts about the quality of your meetings, consider this: only 36% of US workers are engaged at work. With so many employees complaining, the list goes on and on, contributing to one more thing that could be a turn-off for potential visitors to your website.
Help your sales team have more fun at get-togethers. How can you do that? Here are some things you can do:
In the first step, don’t overlook the importance of enthusiasm and positivity. If you treat your meetings as a chore, your team will pick up on your energy.
And this isn’t necessarily limited to stand-up comics and motivational speakers. The most common strategy for positively engaging your sales team is to offer some recognition. A good starting point is proposing a standing reward, like discounts or bonuses.
Did you know that 44% of employees seek a new job because they don’t feel recognized or appreciated? Simply highlighting their job well (by looking at their CRM data) or sending a quick shout-out can do wonders for your team’s engagement and motivation.
An excellent place to start is by going over your top performers for the previous week and checking out their weekly activities. The Sales leaderboard helps you identify your top performers in revenue, meetings, calls, and emails. It is also a competitive perk that can help boost morale among colleagues. As a team leads, it is much easier to acknowledge your team members for a job well done with one high-level dashboard.
You can spice up your meetings by
Think about asking attendees questions in the room, encouraging them to live into the meeting. This is also great for lack of participation and can make your sessions feel inclusive rather than like they belong to one person in the room.
Two, Roleplaying is a method for stimulating your team’s creativity, making data more actionable, and having your team members participate. Roleplaying does the double duty of encouraging your creativity, making data more actionable, and fostering participation from attendees.
Three, If you anticipate a sales meeting with more than one person, allow your team to think individually and arrive as a group at the conclusion. Group discussions help keep the creative juices flowing.
Four, Giving your team a chance to have fun in the meeting increases engagement and motivation with remote sessions. By using a llama, dance party, or other reward, team members will be more likely to participate and engage in productive conversations, which will help them accomplish more in less time.
Five, Switch up your location or agenda to get your team excited about meetings again. Whether it’s a lunch meeting or an activity offsite, changing the location of your meetings to a different place can energize your team.
Your sales meetings must keep people engaged and change the format of your meeting. Exciting activities during these meetings let participants expect an interactive meeting each week.
Even though it can be a challenging career path, and you may not have the opportunity to collaborate with your coworkers as often, it’s crucial that you should still incorporate an interactive element. Task exercises or team learning activities are essential for keeping your team focused. Besides, if your meetings only discuss sales strategy with no other interactive feature, you could just as quickly discuss this in a long email.
Give acknowledgment and motivate through praises
Minimal effort motivates all salespeople, and performance appraisal software must be utilized to appreciate these efforts. This is why it’s crucial for sales management staff to identify each team member’s work ethic and strengths. In addition to this, managers should also look for ways in which they can positively reinforce the reps on their team. The easiest thing to do is to thank your reps after every productive day.
To help you leverage the power of your sales team, create a process that incorporates gamification. Gamification increases motivation, improves collaboration, and helps to build a cohesive sales team.
Ego-driven people like to receive praise and recognition. Top sales reps will participate in a team meeting by calling attention to individuals who have achieved success by sharing their latest accomplishments or been the best performer during an activity in the past meeting.
Recognizing your employees can help them stay motivated. Making time to celebrate when key targets are met, or people are performing well is a positive action that can be taken, along with the evolution of a good culture and satisfied workers.
Include Personal growth training/ activity
It’s vital to ensure that your sales representatives learn something new each week. Find time for different activities that support their professional growth. Examples could be a group learning activity, a guest speaker, or sharing your blog with an industry thought leader and asking them to comment on it during the meeting.
Spend time together to help them improve their selling skills, such as being a guest speaker or doing the activity.
Only talk about the items that apply to everyone
This is essential to keeping everyone focused during a meeting. Never let your conversation get derailed by one or two individual members of the group, and never reprimand anyone in an open forum. Instead, gather feedback privately after the meeting and avoid letting that effort damage morale.
This prevents the meeting from being derailed by topics that only apply to a few people. Don’t reprimand anyone before others in the room, especially while presenting their idea. Additionally, focus on keeping morale high and clearly demonstrate your instructions so everyone can follow them simultaneously.
Create clear outcome and action steps
One of the critical keys to a productive meeting is the buy-in from your reps. This can be achieved by clearly articulating the outcome of the sales meeting and communicating how it will increase team or individual performance. The ability of reps to relate their actions in discussions with the course of potential business outcomes will have them more likely to make active contributions to meetings.
It is time wasted if you take all 30 minutes of a meeting and do not produce any product. All sales meetings must have resulted in action after 30 minutes, whether writing a letter, drafting an email, or joining one of the many social media platforms.
Instead of forcing team members to guess what they should do next, be sure they all walk away with a plan. One example is if they need to achieve specific sales targets or put together a report for next week’s meeting.
Please make an effort to do your meetings as effectively and efficiently as possible by taking notes, confirming their reviews after the meeting, and creating a simple recap. This overview can send reminders to attendees or reference the meeting in your next agenda.
With few tangible action items to follow up on, it’s hard to generate much improvement in sales meetings. If your meetings revolve around sharing information, try closing with a call to action, such as what happens next or desired actions.
Action steps might include near-term training and coaching reviews when discussing a topic in meetings. For software adoption or technological tools, for example, a meeting may address offering training on the subject and being accountable for participation.
Wrap- Up
Meeting efficiency is essential to the success of the company. Given consistent data and plans, your team can see how meetings contribute to the company’s overall picture and make sure they’re efficient.
It’s essential to end a meeting with all the items on the agenda ready to be addressed and closed. Afterward, ensure that you send out a meeting summary so there is no room for anything to go unresolved. Send out email updates of any next steps that need attention.
The magic number for a sales meeting is 75 minutes, with rare exceptions. A weekly or bi-weekly sales meeting should not be longer than this period due to unnecessary additions or speaking time.
The meeting structure, topics, themes, and ideas will depend on how many team members are and the nature of your business model. However, the tips are generally applicable to any scenario. Adapt them if they do not fit your needs. Engage your team by giving them actual value from each meeting.
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