RUNNING (MORE) EFFECTIVE WEEKLY SALES MEETINGS It's Monday morning around 9 a.m. Your weekly sales meeting was supposed to start a half-hour ago. So far, only five of your 12 sales reps have shown up. Now one has left the room to take a call from a hot prospect. (He's scheduled to present a proposal there later this afternoon.) You look down at your notes and then glance around the table. The remaining four reps are busily making notes in their organizers. The only smiling faces you see belong to the three people from marketing and the call center supervisor who all wanted to make sure they got the latest information from the field. If this image wakes you up in the middle of the night trembling or screaming, then read on. You already know that sales meetings, like the one described above, are major reasons for productivity loss. Why is that? The problem with most sales meetings is that they have become a catch-all for extraneous agendas. Everyone in the company wants or needs something from the sales team, and they think that your sales meeting is the perfect arena to satisfy their goals. Whether it's the marketing department wanting feedback on the proposed ad campaign, the training department announcing the newest course offerings or IT describing changes in the order-entry procedures, they all think the best place to address their issue is at your meeting. While you can admit that these other agendas are all valid, you must be wondering why they think your sales meeting is the only time and place for them to deliver their messages. At best, you have about an hour a week to meet with your sales team and cover all the issues on your agenda. If you want your reps to turn up at your sales meetings, if you want these meetings to be productive, if you want to eliminate wasted time and effort, then try these methods to get the most out of your sales meetings. A Productive Sales Meeting Starts With A Plan Your first task in running a productive sales meeting is to understand exactly what can and should be accomplished in such a meeting. From my experience, sales meetings are most productive if they focus on just these three goals: Provide an update on necessary information. Share ideas and resources. Improve sales skills. Provide an update on necessary information Whether a huge corporation or a small one-person business, companies need to be in constant change to survive. They introduce new products or change features of existing products. New trends emerge in the marketplace. Competitors change their tactics. Policies and procedures for getting work done are continually revised. Your sales staff needs to stay current on all these changes if they are to remain productive. That?s why they need a short introduction to each change and its impact on the sales process or customer relationships. And sales meetings are great opportunities to give them headlines on these changes. Share ideas and resources Usually your salespeople don't have the time to talk with one another between sales meetings. Even when they share the same office, each one is so busy finding prospects, preparing proposals and closing sales that they don't have the time to talk. Yet at the same time, each salesperson has important access to people, which makes each one a wealth of information on feedback from prospects and the use of new sales techniques. A sales meeting is the perfect time for your team members to share their best ideas. Improve sales skills Salespeople are like athletes. Without constant attention to the fine points of their techniques, they begin to lose their edge, which in turn can lead to lost sales. Thus, continually reinforcing effective sales skills becomes an essential part of the job. What better time for ongoing sales training than during a sales meeting? The Most Productive Sales Meeting Structure The most productive sales meetings have four components in the following order: Highlights of the week What's new New ideas Selling refinement Each component is given up to 15 minutes of meeting time. If there isn?t sufficient information to fill that time slot, the total meeting time is shortened. 1. Highlights of the week The first part of the sales meeting is the opportunity for salespeople to share important information about what is happening in each territory. This is a great way to start the meeting because it gives everyone a chance to participate. The key to making this part of the meeting productive is to concentrate on the important information, not a recitation of everything that's happening in everyone?s territory. Some types of important information are: A critical issue in a hot prospect A new technique being used by the competition A unique requirement coming from a prospect News from the industry through referrals or consultants To make this segment of your meeting work well, follow these directions: Emphasize the need to exchange important information, rather than listing complete details on all activity. Limit each sales rep to one or two items. Keep the pace moving by limiting discussion on any single item. If an item comes up that seems to need more discussion, table it for later in the meeting or for another discussion following the meeting. 2. What's new? The second part of the meeting is the opportunity to inform the sales reps about new changes in the company that will have an impact on them. Often guests from other areas of the company, such as the marketing department or information technology, have new ideas they want to introduce to the sales force. This is the perfect window for that introduction. Some helpful hints for visitors from other departments include: Invite guests to attend the meeting only for this segment. Review their presentation content before the meeting to make sure it's relevant to the sales force. Limit their presentation to no more than 10 minutes. Allow about five minutes for the sales reps to ask questions of your guests. Remember that it's your meeting. If another department wants more time with your group, have them arrange their own meeting. 3. New ideas Earlier I referenced that topics might come up that had to be tabled until later in the meeting. This is the appropriate segment of the meeting in which to discuss one of these topics. This segment's purpose is to provide time to brainstorm, to share best ideas and to come up with new ways of tackling difficult sales situations. Guidelines for this segment of the meeting include: Introduce a topic that is of interest to the sales force. Have one or two reps describe their personal experiences with the topic. Have the reps share ideas they have already tried that have worked for them. Record each of these ideas as they're introduced. Encourage reps to come up with new approaches and ideas -- just a couple -- to add some interest. Have each rep select one of the ideas to try out with prospects or customers before the next meeting. 4. Selling refinement The final segment of the meeting focuses on the refinement of a single sales technique or skill. By including a brief sales-training segment in each meeting, you give your staff a chance to continually think about and refine their own approaches to selling. This part of the sales meeting requires some pre-planning. Before the sales meeting: Give each salesperson an article, planning form or other document to stimulate ideas. Remind them to read this document before the meeting. Then, at the sales meeting: Have your group discuss how they might implement the ideas introduced in the document. Ask the sales reps to describe how they might apply these techniques to current customer situations. If you have time, encourage reps to role play how a conversation with a customer might go. Some Additional Thoughts A sales meeting can be one of the most productive hours of the entire sales week and an event that all of your staff wants to attend every time. But to get that productivity and enthusiasm, you need to ensure that: The meeting is relevant to the salespeople. If they are going to invest their time, they should get something out of it. The meeting is highly participatory. Salespeople are always hungry for new ideas that work, and they are eager to share their good ideas. The meeting time is confined to the stated amount of time, even if that means tabling a discussion for later. Derby Management 399 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116 Tel: 617-292-7420