Summer is coming to a close, many kids are back in school and, if you follow business activity trends, you’ll notice that things are picking up heading into the next selling season.  Right now in early August is the time to increase your sales activity so you can gain more market share as more and more purchases are made post-summer. 

Get your team together early this month and pick a handful of activities that you need to be doing to win business during the next selling season, Sept- Nov.  Set increased activity goals in those areas for the month of August. Watch Sept-Nov sales grow because your team is increasing activity in August instead of extending your summer by an extra month like your competitors are doing.

For an agenda to lead your team through an exercise to celebrate and learn from your summer’s success while planning for success in the next selling season, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas. 

Join us for a great Fall Selling Season.

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.

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!

I had the privilege (I can say that now) of inheriting a toxic, dysfunctional, under-performing, miserable inside sales team a few years ago.  I mean this group was bad off!  Everyone was too busy to stop and actually do anything about this small group so the problems just got worse and worse until they were a sales AND HR nightmare.  It was time to do something.  So, lucky me, I was the chosen one to take this team and it’s troubles on.  This team was turned around within 30-60 days and became a model for other teams like it around the country.  I thought it might be nice to share how we made this u-turn in case their are other managers struggling with the quicksand of a team with low morale and low performance.

First, I met with the Sales Manager to hear her side of the story.  The problems were blatantly obviously and I quickly realized that her team ruled the roost and she had little control.  It was like my 4th grade teacher Mrs. Jackson (I won’t even go there!).  She had no control and the team took advantage of her weakness.

I worked with this dedicated (most would have run screaming from this mess by now) Manager to help her gain some control and respect and quickly realized this was beyond her abilities and definitely beyond her comfort.  I was able to work with my leadership and find her another more suitable role in the company where she thrives today.

I replaced her with a lady from another territory who wasn’t even currently in management.  She was in a sales role and demonstrated amazing leadership skills with her customers and internal team.  She was process oriented, genuinely cared about her team and customers and made smart decisions about creating solutions that were good for everyone.  And – she never got run over by her team mates or customers.  In fact, she had successful run and sold a business during her lifetime.  I had a gut feeling about her and, man, was I right!  The rest of the credit goes to her.

The rest of this success story belongs to this new manager.  She immediately did the following things:

• First, this Manager just spent a week observing and getting to know the team.
• At the end of her first week, she met with the team and acknowledged what everyone already knew.  It maybe hadn’t been said out loud, but this new manager said it. No one had confidence in this group, no one respected this group and they didn’t operate like a successful team. 
• She didn’t necessarily make it personal. There are characteristics of successful teams across organizations and this team did not have most of those characteristics – sales process, goals, work time expectations, etc.  She simply pointed this out.
• She regularly spent one-on-one time with each team member to find out their frustrations, personal goals, skills and motivations.
• She partnered with me and HR along the way as she began to enforce company policies (tardiness, dress code, etc) and implement performance plans.
• She quickly identified a troublemaker on the team, gave her a chance to turn things around and, in the end, fired her.  That was the only loss on her team. (A good example for the rest, too!)
• She very clearly communicated her own performance and conduct expectations as the Manager of this team.
• She stood up for her team when needed.  This team had done so many things wrong that even when something wasn’t necessarily their fault, the blame still landed there.  This Manager put a stop to that right away.
• She started a communication plan with the departments her team regularly worked with.  They all became great partners with their extended teams instead of a thorn in one anothers’ sides as they had been.
• She had confidence in her team’s ability to contribute positive sales results to the organization.  She had charts and posters posted all over the office showing them on the way to or at goals they had never come close to achieving.  They were becoming confident and proud of their contributions.
• She shared these reports with me so I could “brag” on this team to senior leadership, also.  It was a PR campaign and everyone began to see this team in a different light.  They actually began to figure out ways to utilize their services more because it meant success to them.
• She stayed very close to the quality and workload of the team and added to the team as they got busier and busier.  She made this a place to work and she had the pick of candidates from an internal pool.  NO ONE wanted to work there even 6 months prior.
• We paraded senior leaders through there when they came to town to visit and asked our local senior leaders to make this department a regular stop. We realized this was highly motivating for them as they had been ignored and, quite honestly, avoided during the troubled times.  They were really proud of their environment and loved showing it off.
• In the end, there were a successful team with clear sales activity and professional expectations, they were accountable to activity and sales goals, followed a repeatable sales process, executed a consistent internal and external communication plan, celebrated wins, examined losses and are enjoying successful careers today.

Being part of this team could have been a huge setback in the young careers of these inside sales people.  Instead it was an experience that launched many great careers.  The key throughout each of our steps was communication.  We communicated daily and sometimes hourly in the first 30 days.  It was so bad we actually considered shutting the doors and starting over.  It turned out to be one of the best experiences of my career.  If you are faced with a toxic team, partner with your boss and HR team and get them turned around this month.  It takes a lot of energy, heart and even tears, but it is so worth it.  That team isn’t happy being miserable either – they just don’t know how to fix it.  Step in and improve the lives of each and every one of them – including you.

Good luck!

This post brought to you by Meeting to Win.  Have positive weekly sales team meetings by subscribing to Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Agendas.  Coming soon – The Summer of Momentum.

It seems that when some make the transition from revenue-producing sales rep to sales leader, they forget some very important realities.  They no longer want to hear about the realities of the field.  They want to call those “excuses”.  I admit, I like to look at everything and determine the worst case scenario.  This does not bum me out, it actually makes me feel better to have a game plan should the worst case scenario play out.  It never does and it still feels good to be prepared.

The reality is that things happen that are disruptive.  Some of these things the reps’ own companies do to them, some are economy driven, some are customer driven.  Yet, leadership still expects the reps to turn in 8% revenue growth.  If you kick a marathon runner in the knee at mile 13, that runner may not beat his previous finishing time.  That’s a reality.  I don’t believe that sales reps like to “make excuses”.  I believe they really want to explain their performance, good or bad.  Being able to explain why something happens is a key ingredient in duplicating the good results and avoiding the poor results.

So, I challenge sales leaders to face reality. Among other things, the following is a list of things that ARE disruptive:

• Moving territory lines.
• Adding or taking away accounts.
• Pulling them out of the field for training.
• Asking them to complete a whole new set of reports.
• Introducing a new CRM.
• Giving them a new product to sell.
• Reorganizing your sales team.
• Changing compensation.

And the list goes on.  I challenge sales leaders to face the reality of disruptions instead of pretending like they won’t be disruptions.  It’s delusional to think the sales team won’t be distracted.  They are human beings, not machines. 

Instead, look 30-90 days out and figure out what is coming down the line that could possibly cause distraction for your sales team.  Figure out the worst case scenario in terms of how this disruption may impact your sales results.  You can’t see everything coming so at least get out in front of what you can see.  Get your team together and face reality together.  Expect to be distracted and proactively figure out how to sell through it.  You’ll reduce distraction and your team will have fewer “excuses”.

Face reality and your reality will be much brighter.

“Micromanagement” is a 4-letter word to most sales professionals.  Most sales reps strive to get to the point where their bosses “leave them alone as long as they get the job done”.  There are times when micromanagement is actually helpful. Two of those times are (1) during the first month on the job or (2) when a sales rep is underperforming. 

During these two time periods, Sales Managers have the responsibility to help their team members succeed.  One “micromanagement” activity that I have seen work over and over during these two time periods in a sales career is the AM/PM Check-In Meeting. 

Each morning and afternoon for one month at the beginning of the sales day and at the end of the sales day, set a time for the sales rep to call the sales manager.  This should a 5-10 minute call with a set agenda.  This is less than an hour a week a Sales Manager and sales rep can invest in the success of a territory.  The AM Agenda should include the rep’s plan for the day and the PM Agenda should include an update on the activity they planned and executed.  This AM/PM Meeting provides needed, regular guidance and accountability as a rep is building their business.

Invest in success with the AM/PM Check-In Meeting and watch the territory grow!

Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, Owner of Meeting to Win.  Subscribe and get a new sales team meeting agenda packed with skill-building, sales-producing topics every week.

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.

(To get this blog’s new posts emailed to you every Monday morning , Subscribe to our blog.)

In most cases, we see an official “performance plan” as the beginning of the end for some poor sales rep.  The performance plan seems to be more of a termination plan as the evidence suggests that the goal is often not better performance, but instead a way to begin documentation to justify termination.  In every case where I’ve seen someone put on a performance plan, that was their cue to start a full court press job search before they were fired.   

So, it’s safe to say that no sales rep wants to be put on a performance plan, right?  Right!

If you are a sales rep facing underperformance, my guess is that you are worried about your job.  You might be hoping no one has noticed, you might spend your time sharing the positive news while keeping everyone’s focus off the negative performance, you might be explaining away your bad sales (customer budget cuts, etc) or.. you might even be job hunting.

Here is something to try instead.  Put yourself on a Performance Plan.   This is a Turnaround Boot Camp style Performance Plan by the way. 

We know that we can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. That really is the premise of a Performance Plan. 

To get started:

• Look at what you have been doing and critically analyze exactly how you are spending your time to determine what is producing results and what is not. 
• Consult with team members who are exceeding goals for advice on what you could be doing differently. 
• Once you determine which of your sales activities are producing positive sales results, triple your output of those activities.
• Figure out where you are investing time in non-selling activities (learning a new CRM, sitting on an internal committee, etc) and eliminate those activities from your week. You can politely request to be excused – if you get fired, none of those things will really matter anyway.
• Start your day earlier and end your day later.
• Look the part. 
• Exercise, eat right and get enough sleep.
• Write out your 30 day plan.  This should include day by day what you will be doing and with which customers or prospects.  For example, maybe every day starts with 50 cold calls, maybe Sundays are research days, Tues-Thurs is for 15 face-to-face appointments, etc. 
• Have an accountability plan in place – a report, updates in your CRM or something to monitor your progress.
• Have a clear goal for the end of 30 days and a way to monitor progress along the way.

Now, here’s key element:

Request a meeting with your Sales Manager – NOT during selling hours (you need those).  Have an early coffee or after hours meeting with your Sales Manager to let them know you have put yourself on a Performance Plan, walk them through it and get their input to fine tune it and gain agreement on your course of action. 

By proactively addressing your underperformance with your Sales Manager you will open the doors of communication regarding expectations and possible outcomes of underperformance.  You will show the initiative to address the problem proactively giving your Sales Manager an opportunity to help you succeed instead of look for a way to manage you out.  

Too often we keep moving along hoping no one will bring up the issue everyone knows exists (we do this with customers, too).  If you know you are underperforming, your sales manager knows it, too.  His boss will ask him about it and it will eventually be dealt with.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could change the story by being brave enough to call it out and proactively do something about it? 

So, if you find yourself falling short, stop worrying and start acting.  Build you plan ASAP and start executing with your Sales Manager’s support.

Put yourself on a Performance Plan today.

(Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, CEO of Meeting to Win.   Meeting to Win provides sales team meeting topics for Sales Managers who want to run sales team meetings that aren’t a bore.  Inspire your team with Meeting to Win.  Subscribe here.)

Neal Boortz is outraged this morning.  To be fair, no matter which day I choose to write this, I could start my post the same way and, to be fair again, there is a lot of stuff to get outraged about if you enjoy being outraged.  Today’s particular outrage is about a school district here in the Atlanta area spending $400K of federal stimulus money to take 200 teachers to a conference in Hollywood, CA for 4 days of learning and development.  The justification for this includes the idea that the teachers will come back from this trip excited about what they learned and eager to implement what they learned in the classrooms.

This topic made me think about the annual sales meeting that many salespeople just came back from.  January is a hot time for this.  It is typically fair to say that salespeople learn a lot during these annual meetings and do come back excited.  But then what happens? Well, the same thing that will happen to these teachers.  Back home things continue to churn and students need to pass tests, parent conferences need to continue, a failing student needs to be addressed, discipline problems continue, the school play needs to be rehearsed, tests need to be graded and so on.  Before these teachers realize it, they are doing exactly the same things they were doing before they left for the conference and the conference was nothing more than a pep rally and a chance to socialize and sightsee with peers from around the country.  Lfie can get in the way of great intentions after all.

Hopefully what will happen is this instead.  The school system will follow this Hollywood conference with a plan to implement the top ideas from these meetings that will make the most impact on key areas this school district needs to address.  Whether that is increasing graduation rate, implementing more sports programs, raising the SAT test scores or reducing absenteeism.  What is the plan and what is the plan to hold these teachers accountable to bringing back the change that will make a difference?

If you’ve just had your annual sales meeting, what is different in the way you help customers because of the time you invested to attend your meeting?  Some companies follow these up effectively and many, many do not.  Everyone comes back after the company has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and selling time and salespeople have invested selling and family time and …. do the very same things they did before they left.  Sure, they are a little excited, but are also now 4 days behind in their day jobs.  Now it’s catch up time instead of implement-what-you’ve-learned time.

Bottom line, you should be outraged like Neal if your company dragged you half way around the country for a big rah-rah session with no plan to advance, reinforce and apply the valuable lessons and information you absorbed during your meeting.  I know I would be.

(Post brought to you by Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win.  Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting training topics.  Each agenda offers 60 minutes of sales development content along with ideas to reinforce, advance and apply the training in the field.  Join us by subscribing today.)

Being a successful salesperson takes unbelieveable self-discipline.  It is a job that requires proactive activity to move forward.  At the same time, there are enough things to simply react to that a salesperson can stand still instead of move forward.  I am in the process of writing a sales team meeting agenda to help our subscribers identify their anchors and then figure out how to pull them up occassionally so they can move forward into the sea of opportunity that exists for them.   I thought I’d share the concept in a blog post, also.

How can you tell if you have anchors?  Here are a few questions to answer:

• Have you identified a new problem to solve for your current clients?
• Have you presented new ideas and solutions to help them meet their goals?
• Does your pipeline grow and move at a good pace?
• Have you added new customers, new contacts and new referral partners to your client list in the past year?
• Are your sales growing?

If you answered “no” to any of those questions, you may need to find and pull up your anchors so you can move forward and grow your business.  Anchors are the things you are doing instead of developing and expanding your business.

To get started, think about everything you do in a week to simply maintain, or not lose, your current business.  These are your anchors.  Examine those activities closely and determine how to use those to grow your business or how to delegate them to a capable associate with different responsibilties (customer service, etc).  Anchors can be good sometimes.  Occassionally it makes sense to stop, drop your anchor and get ready to move forward again.  Just don’t sit there too long. 

Now, replace your anchors with business development activities.  Your ship will be sailing again before you know it. 

Pull up your anchors – the sea awaits.

Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, Owner of Meeting to Win, LLC.  Join our growing community of subscribers for weekly sales team meeting topics in a 60-minute format.  Agendas include practical exercises, practice sessions, discussion topics and leadership opportunities.  Grow your sales with Meeting to Win.