Weekly Sales Meetings - What Do Yours Look Like?

For years as a speaker/trainer/coach, salespeople have approached me with feedback into their regular company sales meeting. This is what I have heard:

* The meetings are boring with little to no direction

* The meetings turn into individual attendee "gripe sessions"

* The meetings turn into bullying sessions by management

* The meetings tend to bring down the reps rather than pump up the reps

* The meetings tend to be filled with reports, data, stats, and rules

* The meetings never start on time

* The meetings never follow an agenda

* The meetings never end on time

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Do your people tend to go through the motions in your sales meetings? Do they complain about having to come to these meetings regularly? Do you tend to agree with them sometimes?

A sales meeting is a great indication as to the culture of the company. The warriors that are fighting the battles out there in the field for you and your company have certain needs that must be met by the sales meeting. The purpose of having a sales meeting tends to get lost by companies and managers over time. Here are just a few healthy reasons to gather the troops regularly:

* To get the sales team well armed to sell every day

* To share successes with the rest of the team

* To create a safe environment for problem solving

* To provide encouragement and assistance towards goals (individual goals as well as company goals)

* To tap into the experiences of colleagues and peers with the guidance and facilitation of management

* Get management a view from the front lines

* To sharpen the axes of our salespeople and provide real-world sales skill training for their daily battles

* To help them avoid and overcome objections that they hear every day

* To guide them toward appropriate behavior and activity levels for success

* To cheer on successes and to brainstorm challenges

A sales manager's job is not to grow sales! It is a sales manager's job to grow salespeople on a regular basis. The purpose of a sales meeting is to work on the minds, the hearts, and the bellies of our respective salespeople. Let's take a look at that:

Work on Their Minds

It is my belief that a sales meeting should never be run without specific time being scheduled in that meeting for skill enhancement and training. There are hundreds of topics that can be covered regularly to help your salespeople be better armed to get in there and fight the great fight! Too many times have I heard the sales manager say that all of the sales training has been completed. IT IS NEVER COMPLETED!! The best salespeople are continually looking to learn, to grow, and to improve. They need a forum in which to do that. BTW, even mediocre salespeople will eventually take a drink at the fountain of continual growth if they are led there often enough.

In what areas could you work on the minds of your salespeople?

Prospecting Strategies and Tactics (Can you imagine having a process?)

Cold Calling Strategies and Tactics (On the phone, in person, or both.)

Asking Questions in the Sales Process (What to ask, how to ask, why to ask, who to ask, when to ask, etc.)

Using Questions to Lead the Customer (What is it that they want?)

Listening (Only the best focus on this area!)

Needs Analysis (What benefits do our customers get from the use of our product or service?)

Presentations Skills (Anchored Value Proposition vs. The Canned Pitch)

Avoiding Objections vs. Overcoming Objections (Can you read the road signs before you reach the dead end?)

Networking (The word WORK is in there-how do you design your WORK?)

Lead Pursuit (Where can we find all the opportunity that's hiding?)

Closing Techniques vs. Opening Strategies (Shift the focus to the customer and you'll shift greater results to the bottom line)

Use of a Contact Manager (They are more than Electronic Rolodexes)

Goal Setting (How salespeople use this as the greatest time management tool)

And so so so many more!!

**A great source for finding out what it is that your salespeople need from you in the form of additional skill enhancement is to ASK THEM!!

It has been said that the more that you learn, the more that you can learn. You must take every opportunity you can to increase the ability and desire for your people to learn and grow. The number one thing that salespeople need from their managers is greater education and tools to help them win the battles in a marketplace that is ever increasing in its demands for differentiation and professionalism.

Work on Their Hearts

Without a doubt, many of you are reading this and shaking your head because you feel that your people will not be open to additional training and education. You may be right! But don't shoot the student; take dead aim on the teacher. Perhaps past experience in lackluster, boring, no-direction, no-purpose sales meetings has tainted some of your people's negative expectations. It is because of this, that we need to work on the hearts of our people as well. They need to buy into the premise that you are there to help them grow and reach their goals.

Attitude starts in the hearts of your people. Attitude is the little thing that makes a huge difference (wouldn't that make a great poster?) A gentleman named Don Bargen from Winnipeg, Manitoba once gave me a great analogy. Don is the epitome of a great manager. He has an attitude that lights up the room when he walks in like many people do. What makes Don's attitude special is that you notice how radically different the room is without him in it! Don shared this with me during a recent CEO training session that I was running in Winnipeg:

Knowledge is power to a sales professional just like wood is the power to heat a home using a wood burning stove. The wood needs to be set on fire, however, before its power can turn into results. All the knowledge in the world won't produce results for a sales professional until attitude sets it on fire!

How do we work on the hearts (the Attitude) of our people? Here are a few keys on which to focus:

The Attitude Principle of Reciprocity: You Get What You Give!

It is no longer acceptable for a manager to come into a meeting and say something like We need to start getting some better attitudes around here. As a manager/leader, you need to set the pace! You need to lead by example. Pessimism breeds pessimism. Negativity breeds negativity. Remember, they will do HALF of what you do right and TWICE what you do wrong.

Consistency!

Do your best to not have a hyped up message about passion one week and a down-in-the-mouth message about reports not being turned in on time the next. Create consistency in your delivery, your agendas, your accountability, when you start the meeting, when you end the meeting, etc. Surprises lead to discomfort. Although some discomfort is all right, too much of it kills trust and belief in the message.

Attitude is NOT Defined by Noise!

Don't confuse getting passionate buy-in from your people with hyped up sessions that are platforms for a performance by you! This is about the salespeople and their issues, their goals, their challenges-not yours!

Have a Plan and Stick To It. Part of the reason that I feel that a lot of sales meetings don't make a big Attitudinal IMPACT is because they are not well thought out. If the salespeople are truly looked at as a sales manager's customers, wouldn't it make sense to have a game plan to win that customer's heart over every time?

Get Everyone Involved

Again, this is not the sales manager's show. Salespeople are notorious for wanting to tell what they know. Salespeople often want (and sometimes NEED) to be center-stage. Sales meetings are an opportunity to do so. This is a great opportunity to teach the value of solid preparation and research. It is also a fantastic way to get future buy-in from all who participate.

I have the good fortune to coach the salespeople from a large media organization in New York. Over the years, we have put some of the salespeople to the test of doing live role practice sessions in front of various people in the organization while being video taped. It is in these sessions that we discover the strengths and perceived weaknesses of each individual and thus, design and implement individual development plans for each. Part of the development process in past years was to identify key weakness areas in the presentation styles of each salesperson. Some individuals dumped too much information too soon. Some made the presentation too confusing for the prospect. Some used too much industry jargon. Others did not ask enough questions.

We ran a half-day session in which the salespeople that were the biggest offenders in some of these areas became the instructors. Those who did not ask enough opening questions ran a 20 minute tutorial on the importance of asking questions in the sales process. Those who practiced info dump taught their associates the many benefits of a customer focused, dumbed down sales approach. After the day's workshop was complete, the common consensus was overwhelmingly and passionately enthusiastic to do this again! It has been said that we learn more from teaching than we do from listening to someone else teach. So, when we teach what we know, we are just re-learning what we already know! It was a GREAT lesson learned-get everyone involved!

Work on Their Bellies

The fire and passion that is present in too few of our salespeople is found in the belly-THE GUT! The best of those managers who run regular sales meetings are acutely aware of the need to inspire that passion and turn on that enthusiasm in order to spark the ACTIVITY necessary for continued sales success. As a speaker, I see many people get turned on in my sessions. I see the fire in their eye actually change throughout the day as it grows and the passion becomes reality. It is then that I KNOW that they will go back to their offices and begin the process of change.

However, it is way too often that I find the results do not match up with the initial ACTION. Why? Because firing someone up is not a sometimes thing! Inspiration is fleeting and inconsistent. Regular challenges must be made to pull results out of our people and ourselves. I may inspire and challenge some short-term change in behavior for many in my workshops. But it is the salesperson with continual reinforcement, continual access to tools and information, continual support, and a continual shot in the arm (or kick in the butt) that truly has the best shot for long term success. That needs to come from somewhere because there are not enough human beings out there with the ability to do it for themselves on a regular basis.

So a few parting thoughts for you on your quest to build a better sales meeting process for your organization:

*Never have a meeting without a PURPOSE!

*Never wing it! Prepare better for these meetings than you ever did for any sales call in your past.

*Imagine your people are your customers (they are)! How will you get them to buy into your message?

*Become a role model for all that you wish to build in your people. Success breeds success.

*Never allow meetings to digress into negativity.

*Save the data for memos. Use your sales meetings to INSPIRE, TEACH, AND GROW your people.

*Have FUN! Lot's of FUN! When they are laughing, they are learning!