A good sales meeting can set the tone for a phenomenal day with your sales team. A bad sales meeting or one where they feel their time is wasted can have the exact opposite effect. When deciding to have a sales meeting—or any of meeting where you bring your sales team together, here are five things you need remember.
Have a purpose: Don’t meet just to have a meeting. Just because the calendar says it’s time, make sure there is something of value you are bringing to your salespeople. Just as you ask them to always have new, relevant information for their prospects and customers, you should have the same respect for their time.
Make sure it requires meeting: Can the agenda be handled through a conference call, email or other means of communication? Remember, you are taking your people away from doing something else — they didn’t just have this time available on their calendar. Is the meeting more important than what they would be doing otherwise? If not, it’s okay to communicate via email, phone or even a short newsletter.
Don’t take them away from selling: Can you schedule your sales meeting at a time where you don’t interrupt their sales hours. A professional salesperson has a finite number of hours in a day, week or month in which to meet with prospects and wait on customers. Try to keep from pulling them out of the field or off the sale floor whenever possible.
Stick to your agenda: If you take time to put an agenda together, stick to it. Don’t let anyone or anything derail the meeting. Everyone’s time is valuable so don’t waste it with mindless chatter and conversations that don’t require everyone’s input.
Make it about them: The sales meeting is for your salespeople. It’s not for you. It’s not for your manufacturer or vendor partners — it’s designed to inform and educate your salespeople. Make sure you don’t get off track and lose sight of why you’re having a meeting in the first place.