Our time with your sales team is spent in various meetings. These meetings include weekly sales team meetings, one-on-one coaching, and impromptu and owner catch-up meetings.
Each meeting has a foundational purpose: to help the salespeople improve their sales performance. Staying with our efficient and effective sales management approach, we respect everyone’s time and keep our meetings organized. They start and end on time, have a meeting agenda, and action items are agreed to and followed up on at future meetings.
Leading effective sales meetings demonstrates our competence with the team quickly as the sales team members quickly realize they have a dedicated advocate and coach they can lean on to help them solve issues and win business. They perceive we are in their corner and believe in our abilities. We will challenge them and empathize with their situations, but in the end, they will understand the team is expected to meet the company’s sales goals. We are not master motivators. We are leaders who set clear expectations, believe in people, create accountable environments, and use sales meetings to get better.
Weekly Sales Team Meetings
The weekly sales team meetings occur on the same day and at the same time each week for an hour. The purpose of the sales meeting is to help salespeople sell more, and the team members hold us accountable for that purpose. They know the purpose, and we invite feedback if we do not meet this objective. These sales meetings are all about the team. We follow a meeting agenda, review team goals, processes, and guidelines, and learn together. The team members also bring up issues that are keeping us from selling more, and it’s our responsibility to identify the core issues and bring them to someone who can help us solve them.
If we coach one person during the meeting, we want all team members to engage and learn from the time we invest in the sales team meetings. Our ability to lead and facilitate meetings encourages engagement and self-improvement. It also demonstrates best practices for salespeople during sales meetings with clients.
The sales team meetings stay solution-oriented, developing a place for individual and team accountability and a forum to learn from each other. Improving sales requires total company effort and alignment, so we sometimes invite other department heads or members to join in solving issues or improving communication to help the team sell more.
When we are hired, an owner’s workload related to putting out fires will be reduced, and to do that, an owner’s attendance in a portion of meetings is beneficial. Some owners carve out 15 minutes to join the meeting to listen to concerns or team questions, provide answers and decisions that help the salespeople sell more, and then excuse themselves.
One-on-one Meetings (monthly and as needed)
The monthly one-on-one meeting lasts 60 minutes for each sales team member, and it is held at least once a month. This approach is most effective when the sales rep is clear on what will be covered and can come to the meeting prepared with the relevant data and information that needs to be discussed.
We utilize an Individual Sales Plan to provide focus and a meeting agenda template during these meetings. The individual sales plan includes their long-term goals, key performance indicators, agreed-upon strategies, and improvement action items. We track and measure improvement over time to help sales reps manage their business and work strategically by seeing how their activity impacts short and long-term goals.
The monthly one-on-one coaching meetings are on the calendar and happen each month, but there are times when a salesperson needs to be realigned, and we might ask for an additional meeting or two to get them on track.
Impromptu Meetings and Discussions
After establishing Individual Sales Plans, goals, weekly sales team meetings, and monthly one-on-one meetings, impromptu meetings are less frequent but will always be needed from time to time. We or the salesperson schedule these meetings. They could include:
- Reinforcement of what is taught and learned in a sales team meeting
- Preparation for sales calls
- Coaching on conversations (email, phone, Zoom, or face-to-face)
- Review after calls
- Review of proposals before presenting
- Listening to a salesperson’s frustrations or concerns.
- Clarification of expectations
- And more….
While we strive to be available to each sales rep when they need us, we also coach them to call with business needs rather than venting concerns. Impromptu meetings will not be driven by emergencies—except occasionally—and will be focused more on acquiring customers through a strategic approach. We let the team members know we will make ourselves reasonably available, but it might not be when they call.
Owner Catch-Up Meetings
Owner catch-up meetings are designed to keep us informed about what we can’t see and are aligned with your priorities. It also gives us time to update you on our work. We strive to fit well into your culture and hope adding us to the team will enhance communication. The owner catch-up meetings help us find a good communication cadence and a place to solve issues. You and your sales manager agree on the frequency. 1-4 meetings (15-30 mins each) a month is usually fine.
The Importance of Consistency
Sales team meeting consistency is just as important as what goes on in a meeting. Sales meetings that are run well with a meeting agenda and purpose become more valuable over time. When team members know what is expected of them and that the meetings are not temporary, they come more prepared and use the meetings to help them sell more, not just show up to do what we ask. We rarely cancel a meeting. We will reschedule if possible before canceling if conflicts arise.
A side note: We run our business on EOS®, and some clients do. A cornerstone of the EOS system is for a company to not just have a plan but to gain traction in its plans and vision. One primary tool to gain this traction is a Weekly Meeting Pulse. Weekly is important to EOS, and it is with us also.
Facilitating Learning
While we are adept at selling and managing, our role is not to be the superstar that everyone comes to when a deal needs to be closed. Rather, we are facilitators and coaches who develop each team member so that they become experts in closing business. We facilitate conversations that others learn from during meetings and coach individuals to make better decisions and solve their problems. When people are allowed to make some mistakes and solve their problems, they learn more and use what they learn more frequently.