Peady’s Selling Engagement
Only one in four sales managers believe that their sales meetings help drive better customer conversations from their salespeople. One in four!!
That stat come from John Dougan “the Intrepid Sales Detective” who recently completed research into the effectiveness of sales team meetings. His research showed that a high percentage of sales team meetings fail. Check out his YouTube interview.
Welcome to this week’s post on sales and selling success.
Over many years I’ve been ‘banging the drum’ about this subject – poorly structured sales meetings deliver poor outcomes for the sales team.
It’s their meeting?
Many sales managers see the weekly sales meeting as a great way to get the team together and find out what’s going on; they see it as ‘their’ meeting, a way to communicate stuff to the group and put pressure on poor performers.
Problem is, most of the sales team aren’t fans of this approach.
Here’s another stat: 63% of salespeople say that the sales meeting demotivates them and has no impact on their ability to generate leads, make appointments and close more sales!
Isn’t a sales meeting supposed to facilitate sales not demotivate sales people?
Most sales meetings are simply a call out of people’s activity and their pipeline and that’s why 27% see the meeting as a ‘beat up’.
Here’s another stat: Only 14% of sales managers use the sales meeting to upskill their team. That means the clear majority are doing something else!
Source: Sales ITV
Great sales meetings start with the organiser, the sales manager.
Here are 7 ideas:
- Start and finish the meeting on time. It shows respect to the team and puts a value on their time.
- Send out an agenda the day prior. A clear demonstration of organisational ability.
- Recognise performance. Not just sales, celebrate strong sales metrics too. Sales people love to be recognised in front of their peers.
- Focus on one subject or issue. Don’t try to cover everything every week – dig deep and allow discussion time.
- Include a short session on skill improvement and training. Use an outside speaker, share best-practice or role play.
- Build team culture. Make sure they leave with a positive state of mind – the meeting is for the team.
- Find a way to include some fun. Sales and selling are tough – show a video, share a story or have the meeting somewhere unusual. Avoid the same old format.
- If an item or subject needs follow up make sure its done after the sales meeting.
By the way the meeting shouldn’t run any longer than 45-50 minutes.
The one thing I have seen over many years is that great teams have high quality sales meetings. Sales meetings that are definitely more than a get together to review the ‘numbers’.
One final idea
This comes from Jeffrey Gitomer and its fantastic. Every team member should have a scheduled F2F client meeting immediately after the weekly sales meeting. Not a service meeting, not a production meeting a good old-fashioned selling meeting.
Have a great week!
About the author
Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.
He can be contacted at [email protected]
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