Archive for the ‘agenda ideas’ Category
Saturday, August 21st, 2010
Too often sales people guess what it takes to succeed. In most companies, someone has tried to take the guess work out of success by assigning sales activity goals. The theory behind sales activity goals is that the powers that set these goals are saying that “if you do these activities, then you will be successful“. I am suggesting that salespeople take this a step further and learn to predict their own success.
This summer, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a recruiting project for a sales leader I’ve known and respected for many years. In the beginning, we were using educated guessing to understand what it would take to be successful. After one or two hiring experiences, we were able to extract some data and begin to predict our own success. By backing into our success ratio, I know to the exact numexactly how much recruiting activity I need to execute to get the outcome we desire.
Taking the guesswork out of your success is a powerful tool in long-term success. You can plan for vacations, slower periods – or that new car. So, before the next selling season begins, do the math and predict your success. If you don’t like what you see, you’ll have the information to change your future, also.
Join Meeting to Win before Friday and get a sales team meeting agenda on using your lagging indicators (sales activity) to impact your leading indicators (revenue) or, in the spirit of this article, predict your own success. With Meeting to Win, sales managers get a new sales meeting agenda delivered to their inbox every Friday morning. Stop dreading Monday mornings and join Meeting to Win.
Tags: lagging indicators, leading indicators, sales meeting agenda
Posted in agenda ideas, sales activity, sales meeting agenda | No Comments »
Saturday, July 24th, 2010
Stop for a moment and think about the experience your customers have purchasing from you and your company. Do you make it easy and enjoyable or does the work just begin when they say “yes”. The Meeting to Win agenda that went out on Friday is Creating Better Buying Experiences and it leads sales teams through exercises to eliminate bad experiences and create better experiences. We think so often about selling that sometimes we don’t stop to think about what it’s like to buy.
I was sitting with my colleague while she was booking hotel rooms for our team for an upcoming trip. The website she was using limited her to two reservations and she needed three. To get three, you had to call. Well, we were in an office building with poor cell reception and limited time so, what did she do? She went to our second choice and booked three $400/night hotel rooms at the competition. The first choice will never know they missed out on that business, but one buying experience cost them $2,000 that week.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes by calling your own customer service, reviewing invoices, visiting your website and ordering your own products and services. Talk to customers about each interaction they have with your company to learn where they experience frustrations. Get your marketing team in on the project. If you can improve the customer’s buying experience, you can increase sales.
FREE Sales Team Meeting Idea:
As a team, walk through the exercises in this complimentary sales team meeting agenda, Creating Better Buying Experiences. To get agendas like this every week, simply join other successful Sales Managers and subscribe to Meeting to Win.
Tags: motivate sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea
Posted in agenda ideas, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, meetings | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Here is a link to the FREE e-book Paul promised and delivered. Enjoy! Thanks to Paul for mentioning Meeting to Win as a helpful resource for sales managers looking to have “meetings that rock“.
Tags: energize sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea
Posted in agenda ideas, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings | No Comments »
Sunday, July 11th, 2010
We here in the northern hemisphere are experiencing the dog days of summer. If you haven’t taken a vacation yet this summer, shame on you. Immediately stop reading this and find a beach house - minimum stay 7 nights. If you are back from vacation, then continue reading. It really doesn’t take a lot of extra effort to gain the competitive edge. It simply takes a few strategic moves to create momentum that will reward you when others are just getting back in the game. Now, mid-July, is the time to take action. You have a good 6-8 weeks to get a headstart that you will not regret.
Check out the Meeting to Win ideas for heading into the next selling season with a head of steam:
Click on this link to get a list of ideas: Getting a Headstart
Sales Team Meeting Idea:
- Ask everyone to read this blog post before your next sales meeting.
- Ask everyone to come with their own ideas to add to the list. During the meeting, create a comprehensive list of ideas.
- During the meeting, ask each person to commit to 1 or more activities that will make the biggest difference in their momentum.
- Ask someone to “own” the Summer Momentum Project (leadership opportunity). It will be their job to monitor and report on the team’s progress until the end of August.
- Then, once a month, Sept – Dec, ask the team to share the results of the SMP. I guarantee you will have RESULTS!
To get sales team meeting agendas that lead your team through exercises to gain momentum, close more pipeline opportunities and stay motivated during the dog – and any other – days, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas.
Look forward to Monday mornings!
Tags: energize sales team, motivate sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea
Posted in Summer Selling Season, agenda ideas, free sales team meeting topics, sales meeting agenda, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, summer sales | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
I am finally reading Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. I’ve only been carrying it around for 2 years and, yesterday, on a flight read the first half. The concept of 10,000 hours is one of the many pages I’ve dog eared. This is the concept with supporting examples that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert and a stand-out. I’ve always been a believer that experience counts in sales. Think about how much time you actually spend in front of a customer practicing your trade – 10 hours/week if you’re lucky? How long would it take to gain 10,000 hours of practice? 19 years? 25 years?
YIKES!
So, if you want to be an expert, you have to find more practice time. Here are some ideas:
- First of all, use your weekly sales meeting as a one-hour practice session. – 1 hour/week (Who saw that coming?)
- Role play your upcoming customer encounters with a team member or manager before the customer encounter. - 2 hours per week
- Spend time pre-call planning – opening statements, questions, objection responses, etc – 2 hours per week
- Take one sales training class per year. – 16 hours per year
- Spend 2 more hours per week with customers than you do now. – 2 hours per week
- Regularly attend a customer meeting with a peer to observe them. – 2 hours per month
So, adding all of this to your current 10 customer hours per week, you’ll be at 18 hours per week which would put you at expert status in half the time as your peers. My math shows 10 years (which is how long it seems to take in any field – music, technology, sports).
I love this concept because it means you have control over how you stack up against your peers in the marketplace. Invest time in your trade and it pays off.
Sales Team Meeting Idea:
- As a team, ask each person to calculate their own individual sales practice hours. Just use number of years of experience, add in training hours and ask each team member to come up with their number.
- Now, as a team, figure out how to get an additional 5-10 hours per week of sales practice.
- Commit to getting more practice and then track your performance against other sales teams in your own company. What results do you expect?
Enjoy working on your 10,000 hours.
Tags: energize sales team, motivate sales team, practice, sales team agenda.
Posted in agenda ideas, best practice, discipline, free sales team meeting topics, performance, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas | No Comments »
Monday, June 7th, 2010
Meeting to Win subscribers have just begun the Summer Deal Makers Series. (Join us by subscribing and get a new agenda every week.) We thought we’d share the idea with our blog readers, also. As we’ve mentioned about once a week leading up to the summer, we all know that it can be more difficult to move deals forward in the summer months. Decision makers are on vacation and, therefore, sales process steps take longer to complete. Before you know it, sales cycles have doubled and sales reps don’t have much more than a tan and some frustration to show for the summer.
There is an alternative, though. As a team, choose two deals per rep and get in each other’s business. Each deal owner should share their summer strategy on those deals with the team. The team should provide input and ideas to keep the deal moving and, hopefully, closing during the summer. Each week, each rep should share what was accomplished on those 2 deals the previous week, the planned accomplishments for the upcoming week and, again, get input from the team. This can be done in rapid-fire format. Do it every week on the same deals. Stay focused and close those deals this summer.
The benefits of this are increased summer momentum, accountability to keep things moving in the summer and laser focus on sales and customers. The side benefits include increased morale, better team work and sales lessons galore.
To get structured sales team meeting agendas on this topic and many others, join as a subscriber and get in on the Summer of Momentum from Meeting to Win. We don’t want you to miss a minute of the fun. Join us or create your own fun. Best wishes for a great summer!
Tags: energize sales team, motivate sales team, move deals, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea
Posted in agenda ideas, blog, culture, discipline, free sales team meeting topics, management tips, meetings, sales meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
I always love to share great meeting advice I come across in my reading. Here is some sound advice from Salesopedia’s newsletter this week.
13 Ideas to Run Engaging Meetings
Enjoy!
Tags: energize sales team, meetings, motivate sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting idea
Posted in agenda ideas, communication, how to have productive sales team meetings, meetings, sales management, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics | No Comments »
Monday, May 17th, 2010
Each quarter, Meeting to Win encourages our subscribers to invite a Guest Speaker to their weekly sales team meeting. We’ve updated the list we published in February with more ideas on Guest Speaker options. Invite a Guest Speaker to your next sales meeting and see your team light up.
Wake Up Monday Sales Meetings with Guest Speakers
Subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas and enjoy upcoming topics such as:
Price vs. Value, Deal Makers (Series), Masters of Communication, 13 Critical Success Factors for Salespeople (Series) and many others to keep your team fired up, equipped and winning all year long.
Tags: guest speaker, sales meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meetings
Posted in agenda ideas, agendas, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, management tips | No Comments »
Saturday, May 1st, 2010
We at Meeting to Win are on a mission to end boring sales team meetings. Boring sales team meetings put sales teams to sleep right at the beginning of the selling week when they should be at their very best. The last thing salespeople should have to do is recover from their sales team meeting so they can be productive each Monday. As part of our mission, we want to share a sales team meeting idea for Sales Managers who share our passion.
Sales Team Meeting Idea – Sales Performance Book Clubs
As a team,
Choose a business or sales book from Amazon.com (choose your own or subscribe to Meeting to Win and follow along with our quarterly Sales Performance Book Club – includes Discussion Guide and Chapter Exercises). Cover one or two new chapters each week during your weekly sales team meeting. Assign the chapters to the members of the team. Each week give them 20 minutes of the agenda to lead the team on that chapter’s topic.
They can:
- Lead a discussion on the information in the chapter.
- Ask the team to apply the lessons to their own business.
- Practice skills or ideas from the chapter.
- Pull one or two key lessons from the chapter.
- Set one action item based on the work done during this meeting.
- Get creative – give them the chance to do whatever they want with the chapter. You’ll see a new side of some team members.
Meeting to Win provides Sales Performance Book Club discussions each quarter as part of our Sales Meeting Agenda Subscription. We cover one new book each quarter. Next one, Mind of the Customer, starts in April 2010. Join us by subscribing today.
Join the MISSION TO END BAD SALES TEAM MEETINGS by having motivating sales team meetings that inspire your team to perform. Everyone wins!
Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, Owner of Meeting to Win. Meeting to Win provides Sales Team Meeting Agendas PLUS for Sales Managers who want to lead great sales team meetings.
Tags: energize sales team, motivate sales team, sales book club, sales performance, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea
Posted in agenda ideas, agendas, best practice, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, performance, sales manager tips, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting, tips for meetings | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
How do you become a mission-critical part of your customer’s team? The one that they call to uncover opportunities to improve, solve problems or get results? To become this part, you first have to know what is critical to the mission. As sales experts in our respective fields, it is our job to expose what is critical to the mission and then suggest ways to accomplish those things.
For example, I provide sales team meeting agendas for Sales Leaders. It is my responsibility to demonstrate to sales leaders how a consistent, strategic communication schedule can impact sales performance, team morale, turnover, bench strength and customer satisfaction. I am the expert and I am responsible for teaching and solving.
There are many ways to get to the table or to the point of solving. One very powerful way to get in the door and to the table is by offering to do an Assessment. In my case, I could do a Sales Meeting Assessment. My message to a prospective customer is simply, “As an expert at driving sales performance and important initiatives with sales meetings, I’d be happy to assess the effectiveness of your current sales team meeting strategy. After assessing your current approach, I will return to you the results of my assessment along with opportunities to more effectively use sales meetings to drive performance. The outcomes may be things you can do on your own. If there are areas Meeting to Win can help to improve your sales meetings, we’ll certainly include those options in our report.”
This approach is extremely valuable to a prospective customer (many sales teams even charge for this!) and they rarely say “no”. There is no risk for them to have an expert examine their business and share process improvements. The salesperson conducting the assessment has license to learn every detail of how they handle that process now. The intent must truly be to share ideas, best practices and solutions to improve.
The outcome is very often an active sales cycle for the salesperson and some great ideas to consider for the customer.
Understand the mission, help them reach the goal and you become … mission-critical.
Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers. This week’s agenda is Tie Your Solutions to Their Goals. If you would like to lead your team through exercises designed to help them become mission-critical to their customers, subscribe today.
Tags: CRM, customer meetings, energize sales team, motivate sales team, troubleshooter
Posted in Account Management, CRM, agenda ideas, best practice | No Comments »
