(Make sure to check out the Sales Meeting Idea at the bottom of this post.)
This week we wrote about annual sales meetings that many companies invest in each year. The problem with many is that the reps get back to the field and there is no post-meeting plan – or support – to implement any new ideas, training or on-going focus. The excitement generated by the fancy meeting is not sustainable and all the company has left are the bills from the party.
If your company has made little effort to bring the annual sales meeting ideas back to the territories and customers, there are things you can do to ensure return on the investment you made. In life we ultimately take responsibility for our own success and, in the case of salespeople, the success of our customers, also. You’ve made a significant investment of one of your precious resources – your time. Now, it’s time to get a return on that investment.
5 Ways to Get a Return on Your Investment of Time in the Annual Sales Meeting:
1. Don’t try to do everything. Pick 1 or 2 ideas, best practices or skills learned during the meeting. Figure exactly where you can try those things each week. Practice your 1 or 2 new things each week until they become habit. Ask a co-worker to hold you accountable or put the action on your calendar. Pick a follow-up date to see what results you have seen from implementing the new actions.
2. Ask your Sales Manager if your team can devote 10-15 minutes of each sales team meeting to new ideas, best practices or training from the annual sales meeting. The team can choose 1-3 things that they believe can make the biggest impact on the team’s success. Each week a different member of the team is responsible for bringing a discussion or exercise to support the focuses from the annual sales meeting.
3. If you heard helpful information from your company’s CFO, Marketing Officer, CEO or Trainer, invite them as a guest speaker to an upcoming team sales meeting. Be prepared to go deeper on their area of expertise to apply it to helping customers. These internal resources can help you help your customers more effectively.
4. If there was a new initiative or training program that is being contradicted in the field, bring that to the attention of sales management. This happens often as different departments have competing goals. For example, a client of mine spent a considerable amount of time and money on sales training designed to help reduce discounting. The behavior was rampant and cut into their margins drastically. The training was delivered and everyone left with solid skills to reduce discounting. Almost as soon as they got back in the field, Marketing launched a new product and brought it to market at a 40% discount! All the marketing materials, sales scripts and contests were focused on selling as much as they could right away using the 40% discount as the main sales tool. This is absurd …and really not that unusual. As a sales rep, you can respectfully raise this concern with your sales manager and at least get the conversation going while getting some direction in the midst of contradictory messages.
5. Hopefully your annual sales team meeting provided an opportunity for you to get to know peers from other parts of the country and even the world. Choose 2 reps from outside your immediate team and commit to staying in touch with them. Put a call to them on your calendar monthly or quarterly and discuss best practices, ideas and customers. Best practices have a way of staying in the territory where they are discovered. If you take one or two top best practices from one or two other territories you will have a competitive edge and more successful customers. Bring these ideas to your own team after you learn them and the whole team has an edge.
So, after years of annual sales team meetings which, by the way, are exciting and fun and usually filled with great learning opportunities, these are the top 5 ways I’ve learned to get an amazing return on my investment. I hate things that waste my time – with these practices the annual sales meeting never did.
Good luck!
SALES MEETING IDEA:
- Ask your team to read this post before your next sales team meeting.
- During the meeting, as a team, choose 2 things from this list or other actions you can take to bring your annual sales meeting back to the field.
- Decide what results you are looking for by implementing the changes. Be specific about the results you are looking for. If you learned new skills to negotiate price, you might want your result to be lowered average discount. Pick the specific number so you will know if you are moving the needle or not.
- Then, pick a follow-up date to check your results.
- At the next sales team meeting following that date discuss the results and everyone’s experience trying the new skills or ideas. Decide how to move forward.
Hopefully, your team will experience actual behavior change by practicing the new skills or ideas in the field and your return is worth the investment. Happy Selling.
(Post brought to you by Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win. Meeting to Win provides sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers who want to equip their teams to win. Subscribe by visiting us at: http://meetingtowin.com/)
