Are You Running Fake Sales Meetings?
DO ANY OF THESE meeting scenarios look familiar to you?
It’s the Monday morning group sales meeting. The sales team meanders in one by one. The sales meeting starts fifteen minutes late as the sales manager waits for everyone to show up.
Or, there’s the sales meeting that is really a “Groundhog Day” meeting in disguise. The agenda never changes. It’s a rote what’s-in-your-pipeline sales meeting. The sales team gives excuses for stuck deals and extended closing dates. The meeting adjourns and the same deals are discussed the following week with the same excuses for not closing or moving forward.
Perhaps your sales meetings are really complaint meetings. The sales team shows up equipped to complain about everything that is wrong with the company. They make it clear that, until everything at the company is running perfectly, sales goals cannot be achieved.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Everything!
A sales meeting that starts late sends a message to participants that the meeting really isn’t that important. (It also sends a message that it’s okay to show up late to sales calls.) Sales meetings aren’t operations meetings or complaint meetings, they are sales meetings. These meetings are designed to do the hard work of mastering the skills and knowledge required to be a sales professional. Companies waste millions of dollars because they conduct fake sales meetings.
Sales meetings are designed for:
• Team building. But it’s pretty hard to build teamwork when half the members of your sales team feel it’s okay to show up late and waste other team members’ valuable time.
• Training and development. Stop spending your time only on sales pipeline reviews. Focus time on giving your sales team better skills to improve their sales pipeline. They know how to read reports!
• Brainstorming on ways to up-level the service and expertise your sales team can provide to customers. Stop complaining about what the company isn’t doing and control what you can control, which is exceptional client care.
Stop running average or below-average sales meetings. Add up the payroll in the room or on the conference call. That number should motivate you to get serious about running great sales meetings.
Get Clear on Your One Thing
Gary Keller is the author of the popular book The One Thing. In his book he shares a lot of great advice, one being his focusing question. “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
I was reminded of this question while listening to an interview conducted with Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church, a mega-church located in Houston, Texas. His televised sermons appear in more than ten million households. When asked how he manages this huge operation, he echoed Keller’s one thing concept. He shared that his one thing—the most important thing—is the delivery of his sermon on Sunday. Pastor Osteen devotes a lot of time to this one thing. He researches material on Wednesday, writes the sermon on Thursday, memorizes it on Friday, and then delivers the sermon to two audiences on Saturday evening before the main, televised service on Sunday. He is clear about his one thing that leads to the continued success of Lakewood Church. His sermon on Sunday morning.
Sales managers, what if your one thing was preparing, running, and delivering great sales meetings? Not just good sales meetings, great sales meetings. What would become easier for your sales team? What would become easier for you?
Run Your Sales Meeting Like a Sales Meeting
Running an effective team sales meeting follows the same principles as conducting an effective sales meeting with prospects and customers.
You teach your sales team the importance of pre-call planning to ensure that meetings with prospects and customers are productive and relevant. You make sure your salespeople are running great meetings by asking questions such as:
• What is the purpose and objective of this meeting?
• What is your desired outcome?
• What resources do you need to conduct this meeting?
These are the exact same questions you should ask yourself to ensure your sales meetings are productive and relevant for the sales team:
• What is your purpose and objective for holding this sales meeting?
• What is your desired outcome? Are you trying to improve your sales team’s selling skills? Is this meeting designed to motivate and inspire?
• What resources do you need to conduct this meeting? Do you have role-plays, practice sets, or games designed to test specific competencies? Do you need to review some movie clips or TED talks to provide motivation and inspiration?
Sales managers often express frustration because salespeople don’t take the time to craft specific questions when meeting with prospects or clients. This lack of preparation leads to a “wing-it” sales call. But sales managers, you might be guilty of this same behavior. Have you put in the time to design questions that will create meaningful dialogue at your sales meeting? Or are you conducting “wing-it” sales meetings?
For example, you’re going to introduce a new go-to-market strategy. Craft thought-provoking questions such as:
• Is this strategy in alignment with our core values?
• Is this a top priority for the quarter?
• If we do this, what initiatives will need to be placed on the back burner?
• How will this strategy provide value to our clients?
• How will this approach make us better than our competition?
• Is this the highest and best use of our time?
Good salespeople set clear next steps with prospects and customers. Good sales managers model the same behavior with their sales teams. After the sales meeting, send out correspondence summarizing action items discussed and agreed upon. Assign roles, responsibilities, and deadlines to be discussed at the next sales meeting.
Run your sales meeting like a sales meeting.
Invite the Experts
You don’t have to be the only person providing your sales team with expertise and motivation.
Ask your CFO to a sales meeting and ask them to share what’s important to them when making a buying decision. Your sales team will learn how a CFO thinks and measures a return on investment.
Invite a client to attend one of your sales meetings, in person or through videoconferencing. One of our clients invited one of their company’s clients to jump on a conference call as part of a sales training meeting. It was really interesting to watch the sales team get fired up as the CIO shared her testimonial as to why she continued to work with their company. That sincere testimonial provided more “rah-rah” than any words I or the CEO could have provided that day.
How about inviting some top sales producers from a non-competing company to join your sales meeting and share their best practices for acquiring and retaining business? This sharing of best practices eliminates “it can’t be done” thinking, because the ideas are coming from their peers. It also provides great networking and the possibility of building referral partnerships.
It’s time to stop running fake sales meetings. Get clear on your one thing. Run great sales meetings, not just good sales meetings.
Sales Leaders EQ Action Plan
1. Get clear on your one thing. Conduct great sales meetings, not average sales meetings.
2. Determine your purpose and objective for each sales meeting. Get clear on your desired outcomes.
3. Apply delayed gratification skills. Put in the work of designing a great meeting. Plan questions, research TED talks, design effective role-plays.
4. Avoid vague next steps or no steps. Establish clear next steps based on sales meeting agenda and goals.
5. Invite other experts to share their wisdom.