Do Your Sales Meetings Create Opportunities?

(By Loyd Ford) In the real world, people don’t like meetings. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. People make memes and jokes about it. Still, sales meetings are generally the way companies funnel directives and try to motivate sellers to accomplish their goals.

Shrewd sales managers want to make selling easier and more productive for every individual on their sales team. The best sales managers are always looking for key ways they can improve their sales meetings and perhaps a few of these ideas can be helpful to you.

1. Every single week is different, but make it your mission to catch several of your sellers doing something right before each sales meeting occurs. What happens between meetings makes a lot of difference if encouragement is a part of your process. Encouraging your team before the meeting will make every meeting better for everyone. Once your individual sellers begin to truly see that you are focused on what they are doing right, you’ll find that individuals are more likely to show growth and their passion for what they’re doing will grow as well. 
2. Try to start each meeting with a compelling story that you can use to showcase an important sales idea. Become good at finding brief, relevant stories, then begin meetings with them to make a point about an important sales priority. Starting with a story can be disarming and – if you really source and tell it well – stories can be entertaining and get people ready for a really good meeting. 
3. Always Set The Expectations Before The Meeting. No one likes to feel their time is being wasted. Make it clear what you will be doing at least a day in advance with an agenda that spells out what to expect in the sales meeting this week. Doing so relieves a lot of anxiety and reduces the feeling time will be wasted.
4. Praise The Results You Want To Spread In Front Of Other Sellers. We all know that giving everyone a trophy doesn’t really work. However, if a seller on your team is doing something you’d like the whole team to emulate, praise them in front of all the other sellers. This encourages both the seller with the behavior you want rewarded and for others to join in this behavior. 
5. Bring Something Fun To Every Sales Meeting. Great leaders know those on their team. Bringing something fun and maybe unexpected to regular sales meetings will keep people engaged and looking forward to meetings.
6. Practice Makes Perfect. This may be the most important thing on this list, but it is almost totally dependent on how well you execute it. The greatest sales teams help make each individual stronger and better. Individuals on the team support each other. This includes client presentations. The idea here is to have each seller (and manager) rotate through sales meetings presenting something they will present in the coming week. Each week one (1) person will give a presentation in your sales meeting and the goal is only practice for the individual. The goal for the rest of the team? Positive input to give even more confidence to the seller who will be presenting THIS presentation to a client later in the week. Younger sellers will benefit from your senior sellers and everyone will benefit from the practice. It will also allow your sellers to bond as a team and strengthen each other.
7. Encourage Creativity. Today is about creativity. When sellers show up with ideas they get more respect from potential clients and have more significant opportunities to build relationships. And relationships are everything in sales. 
8. Brainstorming About The Flow Of Money, Hot Local Business Trends. Once a month create space on your agenda and promote researching and bringing to your meeting ideas about where money is moving in your market. Encourage your individual team members to seek out information on anything that uncovers fresh opportunities in your market.
9. Help Individual Sellers Become Good At Referrals. While this seems obvious, it is a critical skill, and without encouragement from leadership and consistent tips on how to sharpen skills in this area, it is unlikely to become anyone’s priority. With consistent encouragement from leadership, there is no telling how much it can increase individual seller income (and revenue growth).

Maybe there is no perfect sales meeting. It’s a meeting, right? But with the right planning, consistent encouragement, public praise, practice, and the other things on this list you have an opportunity each week to create momentum for your team and individual sellers.

Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or [email protected]. Read Loyd’s Radio Ink archives here.