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

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Sales cycles have typical steps.  Customer like to take certain steps to make a decision and salespeople take certain steps to make a sale or help their customers make good decisions.  Salespeople can accelerate the decision process by strategically examining the sales cycles for opportunities to add efficiencies.  The benefits of doing this exist for both salesperson and customer.  Customers need solutions and making efficient decisions on which solutions to purchase must be in their best interest.  Salespeople benefit from getting to a go/no-go decision sooner, also.  They either get to start helping a customer or, at least, realize they aren’t the right solution and can move on to the next one sooner.  I am not suggesting that anyone rushes through an important decision process, I am simply suggesting a regular examination of the sales cycles to look for ways to improve the decision process and begin solving problems faster.

To do so, first list out all the steps a salesperson and a customer make to get to go/no-go on your solutions.  Jot down the timeline and if there are pre-requisite steps for any of the steps. 

Now, carefully examine if there is an opportunity to:

1. Consolidate any two steps into one step.
2. Eliminate an unnecessary step altogether.
3. Simutaneously conduct two or more steps.

List out the benefits to the customer for making the decision with this new sales cycle.  Then, make sure that you and the customer are clear on the steps both would like to take to help the customer make an informed yet timely decision.  Stay two steps ahead with both understanding what the steps are, who should be involved and what decisions they should be able to make along the way.

The sales cycle is an important process where important decisions are made.  Running it as effectively and efficiently as possible is in everyone’s best interest and a salesperson’s responsibility.   Enjoy accelerated sales cycles with this simple exercise.

This week’s Meeting to Win sales team meeting agenda is Consolidate to Accelerate.  Sales Manager who subscribe to the sales team meeting agenda service will receive a 60-Minute agenda that will lead their teams through an examination of their own sales cycles.  Each participant will leave with a new plan for one live deal in their pipeline.  Join our subscribers by signing up to get your weekly sales team meeting agendas from Meeting to Win.

This post brought to you by Meeting to Win. 

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Sales Team Meeting Idea – Sales Performance Book Club

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.

Who is on your “team”?  By team I mean everyone that helps take care of the customer from suspect stage to account management stage.  This could be your proposal people, your billing dept, your sales engineers, your operations team, your customer service representatives and the list goes on.  It typically takes many people working together to win, keep and grow customer accounts.  How well your team works together is being observed and judged by customers and is a big factor in their decision to work with you or not.

There are many challenges facing your extended team.  Everyone has different bosses, people are spread all over the country, they leave the company and have conflicting priorities.  How do you pull the team together for the good of the customer?

Start by identifying the team.  Make a list of everyone who touches every stage of the sales cycle.  List these people or functions by sales cycle stage.  Include the role they play in that stage. 

Now that you have this chart, figure out how to improve your team work.  To get started, list 5 areas of breakdown in your team work.  Are proposals often late, do customers have billing issues, is Customer Service unresponsive, are orders delivered late?  Take each breakdown one by one and figure out how to address it so customers have a better experience. 

Some solutions may include:

• Involving an extended team member earlier in the sales cycle.
• Making an effort to get to know each other outside a sales cycle.
• Including the extended team on sales team meetings occasionally.
• Making sure everyone is clear on their role in the customer account.
• Creating a customer-focused culture where everyone sells.
• Encouraging team leaders to focus on working together.
• Creating a communication system across departments.

Work together as a team to win as a team.  You’ll enjoy these internal relationships and your customers will be the big winners.

(Meeting to Win provides new sales team meeting agendas every week for Sales Managers who subscribe to the sales meeting agenda service.  This Friday, the sales team meeting agenda Work as a Team to Win as a Team will be delivered to our subscribers.  Join us and start having better sales team meetings this week.)

I am getting ready to play my first tennis match in over a year and a half.  As I look forward to the match, I am reminded of something my father said to me during one of our matches years ago.  Something that I have thought about during every match since when I feel like I am on defense more than I’d like to be.  He looked frustrated and said “You’re not playing to win.  You’re playing to NOT lose.”  He described exactly what I was doing.  I was back running down shots, going right where he wanted me to go, just getting the ball in play to live for another point.  He was in charge, setting the pace and … having more fun than me.  During that match and countless others since then, I have had to change my mindset mid-match and play to win instead of play to NOT lose.  For me that means, charge the net, put some shots away, get on the offense, control the pace of the game and, in many of those cases (still not against my Dad…), win.  Even when I didn’t win, I walked away knowing I did everything I could and was proud of my game, effort and attitude.  There was no risk I hadn’t taken and, therefore, no “what ifs”. 

I took my Dad’s insightful observation into my sales life, too, and, man, did life get more fun.  Instead of sitting back following the process, chasing the RFP, settling for meeting with non-decision makers, wondering what the competitors were doing, giving discounts and sounding like 80% of other reps out there, I made a clear effort to “charge the net”. 

How do you know if you are playing to win or playing to not lose?

Are you:

• Following the buying process blindly without challenging steps that don’t help your cusotmers make good decisions?
• Meeting with people who can’t make decisions?
• More worried about your activity report volume than the quality of your activities?
• Spending time on RFPs that restrict your ability to sell by limiting your ability to diagnose and share solutions?
• Constantly running off to fetch the next thing your prospective customer needs with no commitments from them (”send me a proposal”, “do an assessment”, “send me a brochure”, “come do a demo”, etc)?
• Coming in second or third place?
• Getting surprised late in sales cycles?

Or are you:

• Creating opportunities by shining light on problems prospective customers didn’t know they had?
• Challenging dysfunctional buying processes that hinder your customer from getting the best possible solution?
• Sharing solutions your clients didn’t know existed to problems they didn’t know they had?
• Bringing new ideas, industry expertise and innovative solutions to the table?
• Getting full price for the value of service you provide?
• Getting creative on negotiations?
• Risking offending non-decision makers to get to the actual decision makers?
• Addressing sales cycle slow downs head-on and honestly?
• Not afraid to walk away?
• Not afraid to say and do the right thing no matter the outcome?

It is so much more exciting to play to win.  It takes more energy and guts, but it is so worth it.  Charge the net this week!

Sales team meeting idea:

• At your next sales team meeting, ask each team member to bring their current pipeline.
• Ask each person to examine their pipeline for opportunities to “charge the net”.
• Each rep should pick one deal and take a well-planned risk.  Get to decision makers, challenge a bad decision, ask about the competition, exit an RFP opportunity, etc.  As long as the risk will ultimately help you help your customer make a better decision (even if it’s not you), then take the risk.
• Each rep should walk away with one risk to take within the next week. 
• Plan to report back on the outcomes of the team’s risk-taking.  Not all will go well – that’s why we call it a “risk”.  So be it…

Play to win. Charge the net.  Have more fun.

(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 take their team to the next level.  Play to Win, Not to NOT Lose is the April 2, 2010 Agenda Topic.  To get a new sales team meeting topic each week, visit us at http://www.meetingtowin.com/ to subscribe.)

(This Friday the Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Agenda, 10 Things You Don’t Know, will be delivered to all our subscribers.  We are focused on treating prospective customers AND existing customers like prospective customers.  Get a new Sales Team Meeting Agenda EVERY Friday by subscribing to Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Agendas today.)

Most sales reps get to enjoy some long-term customer relationships.  Too often sales reps take these customers for granted and settle into an account management mode.  Account management can mean many positive things, but in this case, we’ll call it account maintenance.  It is not enough to just maintain an account.  Your customer signed on for more than that.  This week’s Meeting to Win theme is treating existing customers like prospective customers by helping them identify and secure solutions to their problems and tools to get them results.

In our 10 Things You Don’t Know article, we suggested several ways to treat these existing customers like hot prospects.  Here is another way.

Get a Fresh Set of Eyes on an Existing Account

Ask a team mate to coffee.  Ask them to review your clients’ website before meeting with you.  Ask them to pretend this client was a target account that they were trying to acquire as a client.  Then get together with them for coffee and ask their initial ideas for pursuing this client.  Then, tell them everything you know about the account, who you know at the account, your theories on what you don’t know and your history with them.  Now, ask them what you are missing.  Find out how they would move forward to help this client. 

Guaranteed you’ll walk away with a fresh perspective on an old account.  You and your client win when you take a fresh look at their business.

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

• In your next sales team meeting, choose 1 existing account on the team that could use a fresh perspective.  (Send an email to the team and ask them to nomimate their own accounts.)
• Choose one and let the team know the account name.
• Ask the team to research the account before the meeting.
• Ask the account owner to send a one-page overview of the account – what they know, who they know, history, etc.
• During the meeting, ask the Account Owner to share a 5 minute overview of the account that was not included in the pre-work.
• Ask the team to be the “fresh eyes” and share new ideas and perspective on the account.
• At the end of the hour, get a list of all the new ideas for the Account Owner.
• Account Owner should share what they will try from the list of new ideas.

Fieldwork Idea:

• Choose teams of 3 and, over the course of the next 3 weeks, each team should spend one hour per rep on one account per rep doing the same thing. 
• Choose one rep’s account each week and get together for coffee, if possible.  If not, do this on the phone. 
• Each person on the team should end up with a list of fresh ideas and perspectives on one exisiting account.
• Get back together during a sales team meeting conference call and each rep should share the outcomes of gaining a fresh perspective on their exisiting account.
• What lessons did the team learn?

Enjoy the Fresh Eyes exercise.  Join Meeting to Win to get interactive sales team meeting agendas for your sales team every week.  We’d love to work with you!

(This week’s Meeting to Win sales team meeting agenda is called 10 Things You Don’t Know.  To join us and get new sales team meeting agendas weekly, visit us at Meeting to Win.)

Salespeople are wise to focus on their existing customer base to impact success during economic recovery.  Competitors are getting creative and aggressive and existing relationships could be up for grabs … unless…you treat your existing clients like new customers.  Think about how you treat new customers. 

During economic recovery, treat your customers like new customers by trying the following things:

• Conduct a thorough needs-analysis with them to make sure your solutions still are solutions. Their business has likely changed like the rest of the world.
• Find out where they need help and deliver.
• Figure out how your company can better service them – clear billing, better response on customer service issues, etc.
• Bring senior leaders to face-to-face meetings to thank them for their business and show how valuable they are to your company.
• Sincerely thank them for their business.
• Share new ways to solve old and new problems.
• Share industry expertise.  Help them be innovative.
• Help them help their customers succeed.
• Learn everything you can about their business – you’ll recognize ways to help them the more you know their business.
• Be attentive, present and part of the team.
• Commit to quarterly business reviews to hold yourself accountable to the results you promised.
• Make sure they know all that you can do for them.  (Exercise: Think of 10 things your top customers may not know about your offering that may help them.)  Figure out how to share all your services without giving a sales pitch.  Your competitors are sharing this information.  It’s best to share this information in response to a business need they have.
• Be someone they can’t live without.

Competitors are gunning for your clients.  Treat your existing customers like the gold that they are.

(To get sales team meeting agendas with exercises and role plays on topics like 10 Things You Don’t Know and other great selling topics, join the Meeting to Win community by subscribing today.)

This is Part 3 in our Maximize Customer Meetings Series.  This Friday, March 19th, the third agenda in the series goes out to subscribers.  The 3 part series will soon be available on our store, also.  To get weekly sales team meeting exercises that cover this and many more selling topics, subscribe to Meeting to Win today. 

You’ve followed the steps to prepare and execute a productive customer meeting.  You’re not done yet!  To maximize the work done on this customer meeting so far, it is helpful to send comprehensive and organized Meeting Notes after the meeting.  This is where many sales professionals quit.  Following up thoroughly is a great way to gain a competitive edge in a sales cycle.

Get started the day of your customer meeting.

• Typically, sales representatives will send a quick thank you note via email to the customer. 
• In that short thank you e-mail, let the customer know you will send them more comprehensive Meeting Notes to outline everything discussed and agreed upon along with a timeline of next steps.

 This action gives the customer some ownership in this process immediately following the meeting and sets you both up to accomplish something, therefore, maximizing your meeting. 

Within 48 hours send your Meeting Notes.  Meeting Notes should include:

1. A bulleted list of the information the sales representative learned about the customer’s needs.
2. A list of action items for both the sales rep and the customer along with time lines.
3. A couple of bullets with high-level ideas on possible solutions you discussed while meeting.
4. Possible pricing scenarios (if discussed in meeting).
5. Call to action. At this point, let the customer know what to expect next.  For example, “we will contact your administrative assistant to set up a time for you to tour our plant”.

 Benefits of using Meeting Notes after a customer meeting:

• By outlining this in writing post-meeting the customer has the opportunity to correct any wrong or missing information. This is critically important for the sales representative who is formulating a solution.
• This demonstrates to the customer that the sales representative has a clear understanding of the needs which builds confidence and trust and ultimately rapport.
• Customer is agreeing to next steps and is sharing in the ownership of finding a solution.
• Often customers use these Meeting Notes internally to share progress on finding a solution or to report to senior leaders.  This builds your good reputation with more of your customer’s leadership, saves them work and demonstrates that you have their best interests in mind.
• Clear communication along the way is critically important when problems or misunderstandings arise in sales cycles.  The relationship built along the way can make or break a sales as it gets closer to closing.

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

• Ask the team to come prepared to discuss a recent customer meeting that resulted in next steps.
• As a team, write your Meeting Notes and share them with the group.
• Provide feedback for each other on appearance, communication style and ease of use.
• To get more in depth sales training exercises and practice on this topic, subscribe for Meeting to Win sales team meeting agendas here.

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We write this blog to help improve the sales performance of our readers and subscribers.  Answer this one question to keep us focused on your needs: 

What is one selling activity your team could do more effectively that …read the rest and share your answer here.

Look for ideas based on your answers in the coming posts.  Thank you from the Meeting to Win team.

(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.)