Last week we shared this question on our blog and several LinkedIn Groups. We’ve gotten some great answers and wanted to share them here.

Here was the challenge:

Finish this sentence (send a comment to do so),
“If there is one thing I’ve learned this past year, it’s…. “

Here are some of the answers – Enjoy!:

Check out the discussion and answers at Sales Playbook’s LinkedIn Group.

NEW RESOURCE FOR SALES VPs:

Meeting to Win NOW offers complimentary Sales Management Meeting Topics for Sales Directors and VPs to use during Sales MANAGEMENT Meetings.

• See the first one here.
• IF you lead Sales Managers, subscribe to get a new strategic management topic each month here.

ARTICLE TO SHARE: If you Twitter, here’s help making the most of your 140 characters…

1. Schedule business reviews with your current clients. This is a great time to sit down with exisiting customers and review the work you currently do, understand their changing business needs and, together, make sure that your solutions are still meeting their needs effectively. These meetings are a great chance to ensure superior customer service, uncover new opportunities and gain referrals. Get this meeting done now and you’ll be well into new sales cycles by the time everyone else is just getting back to work.
2. Call prospective customers to set appointments. Research your prospective customers and call them to discuss a business need they have. Salespeople have a unique visibility into many companies. They can offer to share best practices and ideas from their experience. I have had my very best, high-level, most-rewarding appointments with this approach. People helping people! Again, you’ll uncover opportunities or determine if you should pursue other prospective customers instead – you’ll either have a headstart or free up some valuable selling time.
3. Start having at least one networking meeting per week right away. Get and give a referral once per week. Get the meetings with those new referrals on the calendar. You’ll find new customers before the summer ends.
4. Do your clients a favor. If you start a sales cycle with a prospective customer you are doing them a favor. If there is an opportunity it means they have a need that is going unmet. If you take the initiative to start the conversation and begin moving them toward a solution (a sale), you help them solve a problem sooner. Be the trigger for your client. They will be better for it, too.
5. Share some helpful news with clients and prospective clients. Send a newsletter that shares information that may help your clients run their business more effectively. Your expertise is valuable to them – share it. You’ll be helping them and you’ll be top of mind as they get “back to school”.
6. Get your own team together now and set goals for the Back to School season. SWOT your business and take action now.
7. Get your internal customer teams together (implementation, sales, managment) for your top customers and put a strategy in place for the upcoming months. Figure out ways to help them more effectively, solve a problem they have or surprise them with new value or solutions they didn’t know existed. Contact them and get moving!
8. Get a Back to School outfit. OK, maybe that’s just me! A new suit makes those Back to School meetings that much better.
9. Get back into a good routine. Summer days are often slower and salespeople tend to start later and end earlier. Stop that now – start using every minute of selling time available now.
10. Take your clients out for coffee and lunch – at least one per week. Solidify those relationships and uncover opportunities over lattes.

The important thing is to take action now. Contact clients and begin your sales cycles before everyone else does.

If you get off the beach one month before everyone else, you’ll reap the rewards.

Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, Founder of Meeting to Win. Meeting to Win provides sales team meeting agendas for sales managers who want to experience sales momentum every week.

Sales & the City is happy to welcome a guest blogger on our favorite topic, effective sales team meetings. Michael Pedone is an Entrepreneur with a specialty of helping outbound sales teams to reach their top sales potential. Get to know SalesBuzz: Visit Michael at SalesBuzz. Sign up to get free sales training tips on his new blog, Sales Buzz. Or check out Michael’s interview with Selling Power.

I’ve been a straight commission sales person most of my adult working life and have sat through more sales meetings than I care to remember. Some were great, inspirational and served their purpose. Most ended up boring me to tears – which probably cost me a few lost sales and the companies I worked for a few new accounts. Losing a few accounts is going to happen when you as a sales person have “lower than normal” morale. As an individual sales person, you can live with that. But when you’re losing a few accounts a week per sales person and you have 20 sales reps, that can be tough to swallow – especially in today’s economic environment.

Personally, I believe most sales managers forget what it’s like to be on the other end of a “morning meeting”. When you’re presenting to a room full of newly hired sales reps, they’re all hearing this “motivation” for the first time. You’ve got them fired up and ready to blaze the phone lines.

But soon, like most things, repetition kills that “excitement”. So six months later, your new hires blaze has turned into a barely lit pilot light. And an unmotivated “sales vet” is like having a high performance sports car filled with low-grade gas.
And that is costing you and your organization money.

Here are three solutions to help you get your sales team fired up instead having to fire them:

1. Take ownership. I know with all the bailouts going on today it seems like very little ownership of ones responsibility is taking place. But there is no bailout on its way for you – only the strong will survive and the strong grab the reins and take responsibility for their results. Realize that it is up to you to make sure you’re bringing the right message for every sales meeting.
2. Have a strategy. Simply “winging” it will not work over the long haul. Sure, it works on the “newbies” but that’s because they haven’t heard the same story told 25 different ways yet. Maybe separate the group into “vets” and “up and comers”. Doing so will give the vets a sense of pride and a boost to their usually fragile ego while inspiring the “up and comers” to strive hard to be in the “vets” sales meetings.
3. If you are struggling for new things to say, seek out additional resources. And don’t be afraid if you have to shell out a few bucks to a pro to get a good game plan together. The ROI if done right should be ten-fold.

Meeting to Win would like to thank Michael and SalesBuzz for being our Guest Blogger today on our blog, Sales & the City. Meeting to Win provides sales team meeting agendas for sales managers who want to have meetings that inspire, motivate and drive sales. Have a great weekend! Thanks again, Michael and SalesBuzz.

Today was my son’s first swim lesson. He had some trouble at the end of the short lesson and wanted to quit. As a mother, my impulse would have been to let him quit a few minutes early. After all it was his first lesson and, after all, he did great for 16 of the 20 minutes and, after all, he was hungry and tired. My list of excuses goes on…

Instead of my idea, the teacher looked my son in the face and told him “we don’t give up here”. He ended the lesson not a minute early and stronger and with a new skill. He was proud of himself.

In an effort not to jump in the pool to rescue my son (and give the teacher a piece of my mind), I had to think of the benefits to staying.

Then, I thought about Don Jonas. Don Jonas was my softball coach when I was 10-13 years old. I was his short stop and we had a competitive, fun team. At 12, I broke my arm in a horseback riding accident and was sidelined with multiple surgeries for about a year. When I finally got the last cast off my arm, I brought my weak atrophied arm to the softball field to get back to my team. It was the arm I wore my glove on and it was so weak I had to use my other hand to lift the glove up – work my wrist did a year ago.

It was a rough practice. I couldn’t field a grounder – at all. I kept pulling my head up afraid to get hit, I missed everything and I was getting frustrated. Again, I thought about calling it a day. After all, it was my first day back, after all, my muscle was almost gone, after all, my physical therapy had just started, after all, after all, after all…

I learned a huge lesson that day. Not only did Coach Jonas not allow me to quit (I actually don’t think the option ever crossed his mind), instead he expected me to work harder. I don’t even remember him asking my parents if I could stay longer, he just assumed we would. Basically, he said “we don’t give up here”. He hit me hundreds of grounders. I think the only thing he said was “you know you can do this”. I didn’t, but I was afraid to tell him that. Instead, I fielded grounder after grounder until I was no longer afraid of the ball, I figured out a way to compensate for the changes in my arm and I was picking them up one after the other and throwing the ball to first.

If you don’t have a Don Jonas in your life, get one, be your own and be one for someone else. Push through, work harder, expect more from your team, make more calls, become more of an expert, go to more events, add more value, get more creative, read more books, help more customers, get up earlier, try new things, do the impossible cause WE DON’T GIVE UP HERE.

Quote of the Day from JustSell.

Blog post brought to you by Jill Myrick, Founder of Meeting to Win, provider of powerful sales team meeting agendas and topics for Sales Managers who want to win.