Weekly Sales Meetings: A Motivation For Success
An effective sales meeting starts with a consistent schedule and defined time, not to exceed 30 minutes. While Monday morning sessions are popular in many companies, sales professionals often prefer Tuesday because it allows them time to pursue leads they heard on the weekend and they have more to report.
Whenever possible, have members of the sales team, which includes other people in your organization who end up dealing with the customers, attend in person. But when large territories have to be covered, phone-ins or Skype calls should be permitted.
The key to making the meeting productive is to keep it positive. Each sales person should have already submitted their weekly figures by end of day Friday and the manager has had Monday to analyze them and deal directly with any trouble spots.
Weekly sales meetings are not to go over what everyone already knows. Instead, each meeting is a time when each person (or on a rotating basis if the group is large) should share a story about one thing they did in the previous week that really worked for them.
The story should focus on the customer and how their needs were recognized or met in an unusual way, or how a reluctant customer was encouraged to close a sale. The sales manager should be able to sum up the key sales tips contained in the examples and praise the person who brought the idea to the table.
About 15 minutes of the weekly sales meetings should focus on something to report, and sales staff must be aware from their first day of hiring that this type of report will be requested consistently at the meetings. Nothing creates a positive climate of innovation and customer service faster than making both a priority each week in a meeting.
To close the meeting, the manager should also solicit feedback on any information the sales team can share about the company's top 10 clients. We work and live in a volatile economic climate and if one of your biggest customers is planning a slow-down or an expansion, the sales team needs to know so that effective responses can be strategized.
Attendance at the meetings must be mandatory as well. Being too busy is no excuse; this is how you foster a culture of innovation and how new sales staff learn from more experienced ones.