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Don’t Wing It by Kathleen Steffey

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

(We are continuing with our Meeting to Win 3-week sales team meeting agenda series, Maxmize Customer Meetings.  We invited a friend of Meeting to Win, Kathleen Steffey, CEO and Founder of Naviga Business Services  to share some great advice for the before the meeting in Don’t Wing It.)

Don’t Wing It

by Kathleen Steffey, CEO/Founder of Naviga Business Services

Quiz time:  What are the five biggest challenges your prospects and clients are dealing with and how does your solution address them?

 If you can’t answer that question, you need to hit the books. How can you possibly position your solution as a way to relieve your prospect’s pain if you don’t understand the source of their discomfort?

A solid working knowledge of industry issues lets you anticipate the most common objections and develop standard responses that overcome them. It lets you develop a standard list of leading questions that shift the focus from the prospect’s concern about spending money to the return they will realize from their investment into your solution.

 It keeps you in control of the sales process and helps you establish a rapport and build a foundation of trust.

 Is your client’s industry faced with a talent shortage? If so, how does your solution help the prospect function effectively with fewer people, or raise their profile so they can better-compete for top professionals?

 Is the economic downturn causing belt-tightening? If so, how does your solution help lower production costs, reduce overhead or improve productivity?

 Top sales professionals make time to keep up on the industries they serve. They read the top trade journals, find the blogs and online sites that cover their business and industry. They listen to what their clients are saying.

 Follow their lead. Use the information you glean from these sources to develop a library of standard responses and questions. Practice them until you know them cold.

 Now you’re ready to respond to whatever objection your prospects throw at you so you can lead them down the path to a value-based sale.

(Meeting to Win thanks Kathleen for her insights in Don’t Wing It.  To get weekly sales team meeting agendas on Maxmizing Customer Meetings and many other sales performance topics, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas today.  We look forward to working with you.)

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Sales Meeting Agenda Idea – Dust Off the Sales Training Manuals

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Enjoy a sales meeting agenda idea for your next sales meeting.

Ask your team to dust off (literally) the sales training manual from your latest sales training session.  Assign each person on the team one section and ask them to lead the team in the exercises, role plays and discussions from the training session over the course of the next few sales team meetings.  This will reinforce the training you’ve already received and give the team a chance to practice the new skills. 

Start each meeting with an update from each person regarding how they used the previous week’s lesson in the field and the outcome of that effort.

Enjoy your sales meetings while building your sales skills.

(To get new sales meeting agendas each week, join Meeting to Win.  We provide energizing, fun sales team meeting agendas for motivating sales meetings.)

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Sales Team Meeting Assessment: Sales Managers, Is There Room for Improvement in Your Weekly Sales Team Meeting?

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Great weekly sales team meetings can be powerful Sales Performance Engines.  Is yours?  If not, there might be a quick fix to take your team to higher and higher heights. 

Take the assessment to determine if there is room to improve your weekly sales team meeting. 

Sales Team Meeting Assessment:  Is There Room for Improvement in Your Weekly Sales Team Meetings?

1.  My team would join my weekly sales team meeting if attendance was optional.

(A)  Yes

(B)   No

2.  I, the Sales Manager, am talking more than 50% of the meeting time.

(A)  Less than 50% – Others are talking the other 50%

(B)   Yes, I do most of the talking.

3.  We set a clear goal for our sales team meetings and leave knowing if we accomplished that goal or not?

(A) Yes, our meetings have a purpose and a clear goal.

(B)  No, our meetings do not have a clear objective.

4.  In our sales team meetings, everyone is expected to contribute and actively participate?

(A) Yes.  Our sales team meetings are a team effort.  We see it as everyone’s resposibility to use this time wisely.

(B)  No, sometimes I think people are checking email during the meeting.

5.  Everyone leaves each meeting with a new idea to try or a new skill to practice in the field that week.

(A) Yes, our meetings equip our teams to sell more that very week.

(B)  No.  We usually just go over numbers and hear what everyone accomplished last week.

6.  My sales team meeting agenda is sent in advance so everyone can prepare for a great meeting.

(A)  Yes.

(B)  We do not have an agenda and, if we do, it is not sent in advance.

7.  My sales team meeting topics

(A) Are relevant to our current selling environment – challenges, initiatives and goals.

(B) Are the same every week.

8.  My sales team would say our weekly sales team meeting is a great use of their time.

(A) Yes!

(B)  Probably not.  I’d be afraid to ask.

If you find yourself marking (B) to any of the above questions, there is probably room for improvement in the way you execute your sales team meetings.  This blog lists many resources -articles and tools – to improve your sales team meetings.   Of course, Meeting to Win is happy to help, also.  Contact us to set up a consultation.  We’ll be happy to provide some guidance and point you to the tools available to begin using your sales meetings as sales engines.

(This post brought to you by sales team meeting expert, Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win.  Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting agendas and best practices to turn your sales team meetings into sales performance engines. Join us by subscribing here.)

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Maximize Customer Meetings, Part 1: Before the Meeting

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

(This Friday Meeting to Win begins a 3-week series called Maximize Customer Meetings – Before, During and After.  To join us, subscribe here.)

 As sales professionals we spend a lot of time talking about, reporting on and pursuing … customer meetings.  It makes sense to spend considerable time preparing for these somewhat rare opportunities.  One bad meeting with a client and it may be the last time you ever see them – or at the very least you may get delegated to someone without as much authority.  A good meeting and it could be the beginning of a great relationship.  So, life or death?  Close!

Now, you’ve got the meeting – Congratulations.  What next? 

Today, we will focus on one aspect of meeting preparation to maximize your customer meeting - involve your customer in meeting preparation.  Too often sales professionals don’t include their customers in building the agenda or working toward the meeting goal. What happens instead is that the salesperson shows up with the same slides or brochure they use on every first meeting and the customer sits back waiting for the show.  Years and years of sales meetings have taught sales reps to perform and customers to spectate.  As a customer, I have actually enjoyed some of these shows.  Salespeople can really dazzle.  The problem is that I am allowed to be lazy, watch the show and see if anything intrigues me enough to move forward.  I am not prepared to act or prompted to action.  Before I learned how to be a better buyer I saw some amazing shows, with many performers.  One of those performances was from a company who wanted to build our sales team’s intranet.  They never got a dime of business, but I got a lot of great shows.  If I had been asked to get involved in the process at any point, they would have wasted a lot less of everyone’s time.  That experience taught me to be a better customer and get involved even when I wasn’t asked.  As a salesperson, it taught me to get the buyer in on the work.

Here is something I began to do with great success.  Not only did I have productive meetings, I also consolidated sales cycle steps, met more decision makers and built trust and rapport.  You can try it and see if you get the same results. 

At your next customer meeting, ask the customer to share the responsibility for a productive meeting.   Send them an agenda is advance with the goal for the meeting along with an agenda to follow.  Ask them for their input on the goal and agenda for the meeting.  Once you both agree upon how you will spend your time together it is both parties responsibility to bring the data, people or anything else that will help get the meeting goal accomplished. 

Now, you are sharing responsibility for a great meeting that uses everyone’s time wisely and gets everyone working toward the same goal – helping that company.  You are a partner instead of a vendor.

Sales Team Meeting Agenda Idea:

  • Ask each rep to bring information about all upcoming customer meetings.
  • For each meeting, ask each rep to share the desired outcome or goal of that meeting.
  • Ask each rep to share how they plan to accomplish this outcome (this will be the agenda).
  • Determine what responsibility the customer has in meeting the goal of the meeting.
  • Ask each rep to choose one meeting and write an e-mail script for sharing the meeting goal and agenda and asking for the customer’s agreement and/or input on the goal and agenda.
  • Share the script with the team for feedback.
  • Revise the scripts based on feedback and try this before the customer meeting.
  • Plan to report back on the outcome of using the e-mail scripts before customer meetings
  • (To get more in-depth sales team meeting exercises along with full agendas, sample scripts, field work assignments and sales tips, visit Meeting to Win and subscribe for weekly sales team meeting agendas and exercises.)

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Know Your Risks (Includes Sales Team Meeting Idea)

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

As we continue with Pipeline Health Check week, we want to address risks in pipelines.  If you know your risks, you can reduce the risks or at least manage them more effectively.  As you examine your pipeline this week, check for these risks:

  • A large percentage of the revenue in your pipeline is from one deal.
  • You are not positioned with decision makers in late cycle pipeline opportunities.
  • Your pipeline is heavy on early or late sales cycle deals – no balance.
  • You have not added new “suspect” opportunities to your pipeline consistently.
  • In mid-cycle deals you do not have a crystal clear picture of the decision process and who is involved and in what capacity at each decision point.
  • You haven’t discussed money in mid and late cycle opportunities.
  • You don’t know the competitive landscape in most of your opportunities.
  • Your pipeline does not have at least 3X your sales goal in opportunities.
  • You have deals that have stalled out with no progress forward in a few weeks.
  • You are guessing at the size of opportunities instead of basing it on real diagnosis.
  • You are chasing deals that are not in your company’s sweet spot.

These are just a few of the risks to look for as you examine your pipeline.  Know your risks and take steps to minimize them – the smallest steps can make the biggest difference when pursuing sales performance goals.

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

At your next sales team meeting,

  • Ask your team to bring their pipelines.
  • Go through each of the risks above as a group. 
  • Add risks to the list that apply to your team.
  • Ask each person to honestly assess their pipeline against the final list of risks.
  • As a team, set one action item each person can do to minimize their most dangerous pipeline risk.
  • Plan to follow up as a team and do this exercise again, setting the next action item as you move toward healthier and healthier pipelines.

Meeting to Win provides in-depth sales team meeting agendas with training exercises, practice sessions, discussion topics and ideas to help your sales team sell more.  This Friday’s agenda is the Pipeline Health Check and will lead your team through exercises that will lead to more balanced, healthier pipelines.  Join us and get your own weekly sales team meeting agendas.  Learn more  here.

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Pipeline Health Check (Plus Sales Team Meeting Idea)

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

(Meeting to Win provides new sales team meeting agendas for sales managers every week.  The agenda that goes out to subscribers this Friday is called Pipeline Health Check.  To learn more about weekly sales team meeting agendas, visit us at http://www.meetingtowin.com/.  To download the Pipeline Health Check sales team meeting agenda, visit our store here.)

Is your pipeline healthy?  When you get your annual physical, the doctor is checking your blood pressure, weight, etc.  They know what healthy looks like and they are looking at you to determine how healthy you are.  The same can be done with your sales pipeline.  Here is the difference.  Often salespeople don’t have a clear definition of a healthy pipeline to compare theirs to.  Often the definition is incomplete.  The most popular one I’ve dealt with is “3 times your goal”.  Well, that is somewhat helpful, but who knows if what I have is realistic or just my hopes and dreams – and a way to keep my manager off my back. 

The first step to take in achieving a healthy pipeline is to understand what a healthy pipeline even looks like.  Define that first and then work toward developing a pipeline that is the picture of health.

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

  • As a team, create a list of characteristics to describe a healthy pipeline (3 times your goal, relationships with key decision makers, moving at a certain pace, size of deals, etc)
  • Then, each team member should look at their pipeline and provide a quick assessment of where theirs lines up (right size, etc) and wehre it  falls short (not enough deals, wrong size deals, etc).
  • The team should share 1-3 ideas per salesperson on how to bring each pipeline in line with the picture of health.
  • Everyone should walk away with 1-3 action items that will result in healthier pipelines across the board.
  • Plan to check back in a month for another Pipeline Health Check to determine how the actions are working.
  • Keep this up on a regular basis to keep pipelines strong and healthy.

(Subscribe to Meeting to Win to get more in-depth sales team meeting training exercises on topics like Pipeline Health Check, Maximize Customer Meetings, Build a Better Value Proposition, Troubleshooters and many other powerful topics.  To download the Pipeline Health Check sales team meeting agenda, visit our store here.))

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How to Run an Effective Sales Meeting by Kelley Robertson

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

I came across this article and liked Kelley’s perspective on effective sales team meetings.  I want to share his insights with our readers.  Enjoy!  (To get new sales team meeting agendas each week visit Meeting to Win.)  

How to Run an Effective Sales Meeting by Kelley Robertson

Sales meetings are a fact of life and business and they are important for a variety of reasons.

-They allow larger companies to address the entire sales team as a group.

-They offer opportunities to provide additional training (product, skills, and technical).

-They help keep your team up-to-date.

-And, they present a tremendous opportunity for your team to connect and develop stronger relationships with each other.

Unfortunately, many sales meetings are unproductive and not nearly as effective as they could be. Here are a few of the most common mistakes people make when scheduling and running sales meetings.

Read the rest….HERE

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Sales Team Meeting Idea: The War Room (An Excerpt from Meeting to Win’s 100 Sales Team Meeting Topics e-book)

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Meeting to Win provides Sales Managers with sales team meeting agendas, topics, exercises and training modules all designed to equip selling teams to compete and win.  We know that Sales Managers get pulled in many directions and have to determine the best use of their valuable resource of time.  We believe that outsourcing sales team meeting planning is one way for Sales Managers to wisely manage their time.  That’s where we come in! 

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Below is one topic from the Meeting to Win e-book, 100 Sales Team Meeting Topics.  The topic is what we call The War Room and it has been very popular this past year.  Sales teams that face reality and address it rationally, strategically and head-on succeed in the long run. This means their customers are better served, also.  The customers’ success is the salesperson’s goal and, therefore, the underlying goal of every Meeting to Win agenda and sales team meeting topic.

Enjoy The War Room exercise at your next sales team meeting.  Get more topics by obtaining the e-book or subscribing for new sales team meeting topics to be delivered to your inbox every Friday. 

War Room

The War Room exercise is a time to get together as a team to address the surrounding business climate, how it is affecting the team’s selling efforts and what actions make sense to address it moving forward.

  • As a team, quickly list the ways the current business climate is affecting your business. What are the most recent developments in the economy, your industry, your customer base, your competitors, etc?
  1. ________________________________________
  2. ________________________________________
  3. ________________________________________
  4. ________________________________________
  5. ________________________________________
  6. ________________________________________
  7. ________________________________________
  8. ________________________________________
  9. ________________________________________
  10. ________________________________________
  • Begin with one item from the list you just created and, as a group, share some ideas, best practices and strategies for handling that challenge.

Challenge:  ______________________________________

Strategies: 

  1.  ________________________________________
  2. ________________________________________
  3. ________________________________________
  4. ________________________________________
  5. ________________________________________

 

  • Continue this with each item until you run out of time.

Challenge:  ______________________________________

Strategies: 

  1.  ________________________________________
  2. ________________________________________
  3. ________________________________________
  4. ________________________________________
  5. ________________________________________

 

Challenge:  ______________________________________

Strategies: 

  1.  ________________________________________
  2. ________________________________________
  3. ________________________________________
  4. ________________________________________
  5. ________________________________________

 

Challenge:  ______________________________________

Strategies: 

  1.  ________________________________________
  2. ________________________________________
  3. ________________________________________
  4. ________________________________________
  5. ________________________________________

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Turn Gatekeepers Into Escorts (Plus: Sales Team Meeting Idea)

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

(Each week Meeting to Win provides a 60-minute sales team meeting agenda for our subscribers.  Each week we cover sales and business topics all designed to help salespeople develop as sales professionals, sell more and better serve their customers.  The agendas are packed with exercises, discussions and ways for your team to grow.  This week’s agenda is Turn Gatekeepers Into Escorts.  Visit us at Meeting to Win to learn more.)

How do you turn your current Gatekeepers into Escorts?  Imagine… those currently keeping you from bringing solutions to decision makers actually setting up the meeting for you to do just that.  Seem like a dream?  It’s not…

To do this, sales reps need to think differently about their gatekeepers. First of all, let’s define gatekeeper for the sake of this discussion. 

A GATEKEEPER is anyone who is preventing or hindering you from working with a decision maker.  These people often take the form of a

  1. receptionist,
  2. executive assistant,
  3. RFP committee,
  4. manager in charge of finding a vendor and so on.

To think differently about gatekeepers, consider the important job they do.  RFP committiees are doing the legwork of gathering information to help their company solve a problem or get a result. Executive Assistants are limiting the interruptions of a senior leader focused on his or her company’s key priorities.  An IT Director is using his or her expertise to compare requirements with capabilities before involving decision makers in the business decisions. 

To salespeople who want access to those decision makers, gatekeepers can be seen as nuisances instead of part of an important part of the selling process.  If you are currently being hindered by gatekeepers, here is something to try.

  1. Consider their specific job and the business reasons they may be keeping you from the decision makers.
  2. Respect their position and the insider information a good relationship is sure to provide.
  3. Now, how can you address their needs in a way that will motivate them to escort you and your ideas to the decision makers?   Determine what criteria the gatekeeper needs to satisfy to move you to the decision makers.
  4. Then, share your desire to meet with those making and impacted by the buying decisions.  Let the gatekeeper know why (it’s got to be for their benefit, not yours) and ask how you can work together to get them comfortable and motivated to bring this solution to decision makers.  Figure out how to help them do their job and ultimately make them look great.
  5. Now you are working together and you are actually helping them succeed in their gatekeeper role.

Gatekeepers do serve a purpose and are not always easy to deal with.  They sometimes abuse their power, make poor decisions and often don’t seem to have the company’s best interest in mind.  Teach them how to bring great solutions to their company by partnering with them instead of trying to run them over.  You’ll be more efficient and enjoy the process more.

 

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

At your next sales team meeting, ask each team member to identify the gatekeepers in each of their pipeline opportunities.  Figure out the important role they play in the overall decision process.  Then, figure out how each rep can help them do their gatekeeper job more effectively so the deal can move forward to the real decision makers.

At the end of your meeting, each rep should have a clear gatekeeper strategy for one deal in their pipeline.

For more in depth exercises each week, subscribe to Meeting to Win sales team meeting agendas by visiting us here.  The next agenda is Turn Gatekeepers Into Escorts (delivered Friday, February 12th, 2010).

To download the Sales Team Meeting Agenda (60 Minutes), Turn Gatekeepers Into Escorts, visit our Store here.

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Troubleshooters Gain 100 Selling Hours in 2010

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

(To get a Sales Team Meeting Agenda and lead your team through a Troubleshooters exercise, download Troubleshooters from our STORE now.)

What could you do with 100+ ADDITIONAL selling hours per year? I did the math on this a few years ago and since then have been committed to solving nagging little troubles that arise.  Let me explain.

Often a sales rep will face a recurring and nagging trouble such as invoice issues, late deliveries, collections, implementation schedule conflicts and other customer service/post-sale issues.   Because of my own frustration with these things, I’ve added up the minutes I spend on these issues in a typical sales week.  Believe it or not, 2 hours is a low average.  And, more eye-opening is that it tends to be the same trouble over and over again.  So, this could be a frustration or … an opportunity. 

What if I solved that ONE trouble and gained 2 hours per week back in my selling week?  I chose to make solving that one trouble a priority.  Even when I wasn’t able to completely make it go away, I was able to drastically reduce the time I spent on it each week.  The hard part was to stop and take the time to find a solution instead of just living with it.  What I got was over 100 hours of additional selling time that year – and, in most cases, happier customers and reduced frustration every day.   Everyone wins!

So, quit living with that recurring frustration and get your life back – or at least 100 hours of it.

(This post brought to you by Meeting to Win, provider of sales team agendas for Sales Managers.  Troubleshooters agenda comes out this Friday.  Join us and lead your team through an exercise to take back 2 hours per week per salesperson.  If you have 8 salespeople on your team times 2 hours per week times 50 weeks per year you get an ADDITIONAL 800 SELLING HOURS PER YEAR for your team.  It’s worth the time to solve problems.)

(To get a Sales Team Meeting Agenda and lead your team through a Troubleshooters exercise, download Troubleshooters from our STORE now.)

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Posted in agenda ideas, agendas, how to have productive sales team meetings, sales managers, 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 »

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