Highly effective sales meetings require critical management self-examination:

a.) would you attend your sales meetings if it wasn’t required?

b.) consultants determine everything they need to know about a sales team by attending a sales meeting, what does your sales meeting say?

These meetings belong to your team, not you. The sales staff is management’s “account list.” Sales meetings are one of the best ways to build value/growth with your “account list.” Reps should leave the meeting feeling educated, energized, and enthusiastic.

Examine the cost of a sales meeting; divide the yearly combined income of everyone in the room by 2080 (the number of work hours in a year).  That is the cost of having your team assembled for one hour!

Here are my 11 rules for sales-driven meetings:

1. Must be fast paced/relevant and START ON TIME! Your audience, by nature, doesn’t want to “sit around.”
2. Last only one hour! If other meetings occur that week, drop a second sales meeting.
3. Cell phones /laptops (except for note taking) are banned.
4. Use an agenda to focus the meeting and close with an inspirational thought.
5. Create a safe zone environment to talk about the good/bad/ugly. Managers must resist getting defensive, causing a red flag, telling everyone to keep their mouth shut. If this occurs, sales meetings become one-way, top-down conversations.
6. Content must pertain to 100% of attendees. DO NOT cover a problem/concern/frustration that only applies to 90% of the staff: there will be 10% it doesn’t apply to. Cover these limited topics in individual meetings. It is incumbent on management to limit single-issue rep discussions. Simply “park” a limited topic for after the meeting.
7. Capture all training, client visits, and corporate visits, on video for future training.
8. Starting time is 8:30 am twice a week, Monday and Thursday mornings
   • Monday: review week priorities, business pacing, good seeds (reps share successes from the prior week = any breakthroughs, cold calling, sales), competitive intel, other pertinent timely information.
   • Thursday: could include Rep’s role-play real world sales presentations, speaker’s bureau with current/target clients talking about their business category (offer them free digital space in exchange for their time), senior reps doing training on areas of expertise, broad management rep training, account brainstorming (Reps bring a stall/problem/creative challenge for fresh ideas. Keep it fast-paced, quantity not quality. Reps make notes and process later.), Grow a very young /inexperienced staff’s knowledge base quickly and exponentially by asking each rep to succinctly offer the best thing they learned or the toughest objection they heard that week.  Reach out to me for some great brainstorming resources.
9. Training is a part of sales rep compensation. The education/insights/strategies gleaned from those sessions will pay big dividends for a lifetime.
10. Take field trips, especially to new builds/upgrades. It educates, builds esprit-de corps, and instills huge pride.
11. Sales meetings are a barometer of your team. If reps hang in the back of the room, not participating or taking notes, they are telegraphing their lack of interest in growing and are not engaged.

I create company-wide and individual out of home sales growth through consulting, partnering, and mentoring.  Send me your questions/comment at: KevinJGephart@gmail.com.

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