- [Ray] Welcome to SRG Insights, where we answer questions about sales,
sales management, and sales training. And today's question is...
- Kenneth Vogt, owner at Vera Claritas asks, what do you cover in your
weekly sales meetings? If you have a weekly meeting with your sales team,
what is regular on the agenda? What is useful to you as a manager?
And what is useful to your salespeople?
- Well, I love that question because I think oftentimes, sales meetings get a bad
rap. And what happens is it's used more as the opportunity for the sales manager to
kind of scrutinize the activities of the sales team for that week,
and, you know, frankly sometimes beat them up on where they're deficient.
As opposed to, I'd like to take a different approach to the sales meeting,
which is thinking about, it's not about the manager, it should be about the
sales team.
It should be about motivating, it should be about improving their performance,
training, and really solving...hoping to solve their problems as opposed
to using it as a replacement for reviewing a report, or maybe for a one-on-one, which
should be handled separately and addressing more of those sticky issues in
a more sensitive, personal setting. So, some of the things I'd want to include on
my agenda is really, what are the highlights for the week? So, having each
individual come prepared, and you can do this in advance, but having them come
prepared with, what was a high point? What was the best thing that happened with a
customer that week? So, sharing a success story and then maybe sharing a challenge.
You know, what was the biggest pushback? What was the biggest objection?
What was a challenge that they ran into? Let's socialize and talk about those,
those are useful, those are productive conversations. It really gets the team
engaged. A second item, I'd certainly want to address the pipeline,
what are the key opportunities, the largest opportunities in the pipeline?
And have people comment on how they're pursuing and proceeding with those
opportunities. But, you know, depending on the team size and the size of the
pipeline, there isn't time to go through every single opportunity and I think we
often get bogged down just essentially reading what's in the pipeline.
Again, that can be done in advance or offline, but what I'd particularly want to
look at is the largest opportunities, also those that have been in the pipeline
or in the stage the longest. So, looking at a little pipeline hygiene,
and kind of what's stuck? Let's focus on those and maybe as a group, again,
we can ask some questions, we can brainstorm, we can talk about,
what can we do to help those opportunities move forward? Or maybe we need to set up a
separate pursuit meeting to really take on that challenging opportunity,
but again, focusing on what's most important, what's going to make the most
difference to hitting our numbers and our team hitting their numbers each month and
each quarter? And I also like, on the agenda, to have a training topic.
So, this may be something that came up during the week or a running list that the
manager can collect, so that we always have an opportunity to,
and it may be sharing a video, a blog post, a key discussion topic amongst the
team, you know, something as simple as, "Here are two objections,
let's talk about how we're going to address and handle those objections." Or,
"Let's go through the competition, maybe we look at the competition's website,"
competitor's website that day and do a little preview of what they're doing.
So, just an opportunity to sharpen the saw, to keep skills top of mind,
and the fact that training is not an event but an ongoing effort,
and I believe every sales meeting should have some opportunity to improve those
skills. Another agenda item I'd like to have is just a quick opportunity for walk
on items, any issues or challenges that may have come up, and I think we need to
manage this carefully. You know, we don't obviously want to derail the conversation,
and sometimes they're much larger than we have time for. So, that's great,
we'll put them on a parking lot or put them on a follow up item to be addressed,
but at least we want to give the sales team a chance to bring those issues up
that may be affecting their performance or those roadblocks that may be getting in
their way, that as a manager, really, we should be focused on trying to help them
and trying to address those. And then the final piece and I really would like to end
in the meeting on this note, is a motivational or upbeat topic.
So, that may be a celebration of a win, that may be recognition for a great job
done, you know, a key milestone, or, you know, I love sharing a customer quote or
testimonial, maybe it's feedback from a survey we've gotten. Something that shares
the expertise, the competency, the successes we're having, not just
as a team but as a company, and ends the meeting on that upbeat takeaway that they
can feel good about what they're doing. So, just some ideas for the agenda,
obviously it varies by your team size, the amount of time that you have,
and detail to get into, but again, I would take the philosophy that this meeting
should be about the team, about engaging them and having them motivated as opposed
to the manager telling or presenting during the entire meeting.
It also makes it more fun and much more engaging. Those are my thoughts on the
sales meeting. Thank you.