Tips on sales meetings. Are you a sales manager looking for some tips on sales meetings and ideas to improve these sales meetings. Use these tips to motivate, encourage and train your team. This is one in a series of articles on approaches to enhancing sales performance. The articles include presentation skills, cold calling, closing, questioning skills, territory management, progressing the sales and many others.
TIP 1 Be the facilitator of the meeting. Use team members to present the agenda items. Sales management is all about encouraging a team to make constant improvements. These improvements should encompass all that the team can be rather than just a narrow concentration on sales figures. One way to accomplish growth is to have your team members proactively involve themselves in sales meetings. They should present figures, introduce new products or services, train others on sales techniques etc as a regular part of their role as salespeople. TIP 2 The success of the meeting is proportionate to the amount of planning the sales manager does. First plan your objectives, then content and finally your agenda and make sure following tip 1 that your sales team is actively involved every step of the way. TIP 3 Align your objectives of the meeting with your sales goals Use the phrase "By the end of this meeting I want ....." while reflecting on your annual, quarterly sales goals. TIP 4 Focus content on the following areas: - communication issues i.e. new product releases updates on current products/services etc.
| - tactical selling issues examples including tips for selling
| - results achieved budgets etc
| - motivational/learning issues
| TIP 5 Gather input for the next agenda from your team at the end of each meeting while trying to standardise the agenda as much as possible TIP 6 Circulate the agenda in advance making sure you outline what, who and how long for each agenda item TIP 7 Keep the meeting to less than an hour with 45 minutes ideal with the best times being outside key selling times and preferably early in the morning TIP 8 Don't focus on individual negative performance in front of the team unless you have a compelling reason Remember that the purposes of a regular sales meeting should be to communicate and to motivate - so don't fall into the trap of turning the meeting into a complaint-fest with every salesperson's failings for the past week exposed one after the other TIP 9 Be proactive rather than reactive - focus on how to excel this week rather than analysing what happened last week. TIP 10 Take the last few minutes of each meeting to review the effectiveness of the meeting TIP 12 Send a brief summary of the meeting to all participants making sure that all action points are noted TIP 13 Make certain all action points are followed up religiously TIP 14 Cancel the meeting if you have nothing to say BONUS After the meetings are running this way for a few months make some or all of your meetings optional. You hold your staff accountable for their performance so why not yours, too? You are doing a good job if your gun salespeople attend your meetings.
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