This weekend, I watched the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro.

It followed a converation I had with a friend who is helping a recently diagnosed family member navigate cancer treatment. She said that she has had to make some changes to her daily routine so she is more mentally “present” to make good decisions, understand all the medical terms, determine the best options and support several family members emotionally.

The movie and this conversation got me thinking about how we really can control, to a large extent, our ability to maximize our brain power.

(Sales Managers, we’d love to help you hold powerful sales team meetings this Fall – See how we can help you HERE.)

As salesprofessionals head into the Fall 2011 selling season, there are ways to prepare and set themselves up for success.  Today, I challenge them to think about how to prepare mentally.  Here are some ideas to help them maximize their brain power so they can be more focused, disciplined, strategic, innovative and creative. 

1.  Plan a bedtime that allows for enough sleep. 

2.  Get up early.

3.  Eat healthy.

4.  Eat at a table, not the TV.

5. Exercise at least 30 minutes per day.

6. Get fresh air every day – no matter the weather.

7. Read books – fiction, non-fiction and outside your comfort zone.

8.  Visit museums and art galleries.

9.  Have some quiet time each day.

10.  Set a time- management schedule and stick to it.

11.  Say “no” to things.

(What else would you and your team add to this list?  What would you remove?  Meeting to Win subscribers will enjoy a Limitless sales team meeting agenda in August 2011.  Subscribe today and don’t miss another issue.)

12.  _________________

13.  ________________

14.  _________________

15.  ________________

As you prepare for the Fall 2011 selling season, plan to unleash your brain power for your benefit and the benefit of those who rely on you – your customers.  Happy Selling from Meeting to Win.

Just a reminder – summer selling is different.  Here are some ways to meet the challenge: 

We Interrupt this Summer to Bring You…Sales

For added summer sales momentum, join Meeting to Win subscribers for the Summer of Experts.  Each week, we’ll study the thoughts of a different sales expert and apply the lessons to our own business.  Subscribe now and get the weekly expert article and sales team meeting agenda.

The Meeting to Win Agenda that is delivered to subscribers on February 25th addresses Professional Image in regards to appearance.  A colleague who knew about this Professional Image series forwarded us an article, UBS relaxing dress code, which set underwear standards.  I had a colleague on our HR team at a previous employer who wrote the funniest dress code policy.  I wish I would have saved it.  He even went so far as to suggest “no white shoes after Labor Day”.  People’s choices in the workplace create a never-ending list of “don’ts” for an HR team to address.  This is part of the joy of working with people. 

As we continue down the path of Professional Image in our sales team meeting topic series, we wanted to share this article and challenge you and your team.  The truth is that our image does impact our performance whether we like it or not. 

Ask your team members to share their own image standards in the workplace.  What is on their list of “dos” and their list of “don’ts”?  As a team, set your team’s standards together.  You can even have some fun with this!

To get sales team meeting topics on Professional Image, visit the Meeting to Win store to purchase and download Professional Image Topics for immediate use.

It is my pleasure to give you a FREE sales team meeting topic from Meeting to Win.  Meeting to Win provides new sales team meeting topics every week for our subscribers (best deal!).  Also, you may visit the Meeting to Win store and choose from over 90 topics for immediate download (more being added all the time!).

Enjoy this FREE SAMPLE sales team meeting topic, 10 Things Your Customers Don’t Know.

10 Things Your Customers Don’t Know Summary:

It has been proven over and over that it is in the best interest of sales professionals to nurture their existing customer relationships to succeed in the long term. The cost of maintaining and growing an existing customer is considerably less than acquiring a new one. With that in mind, this topic is about continuing to educate our existing customers about how we can help them succeed. Often, we sell them one solution to get one result and we fail to expand that relationship across their organization or across our own suite of solutions.  In this topic, your team will be challenged to think about what their customers don’t know you can do for them.  They will leave the meeting with a strategy for uncovering new needs at existing customers and then sharing solutions to those uncovered needs. The result should be expanded business with existing customers. 

DOWNLOAD HERE.

Good Selling,

Jill Myrick

Owner, Meeting to Win

Keeping Monday morning sales team meetings fresh and energizing takes some effort.  Here are three ideas to liven up your Monday Morning Sales Team Meetings.

Get a NEW sales team meeting topic EVERY Friday morning delivered right to your inbox – Subscribe to Meeting to Win by clicking HERE.

1.  Athletes do this.. why not you?  Baseball players have at-bat music, wrestlers have entrance music and teams have theme songs.  Ask your team to choose and share their theme song for the quarter.  Ask them to share the song and why they chose it.  There are many things you can do with these theme songs throughout the quarter – use them during sales team meetings, set their reports to music, fire them up by playing the song on their voicemail.  Music is powerful – use the power!

2.  Invite customers to your sales team meetings.  Once per month, invite a different customer to join your sales team meeting for a few minutes.  Ask them why they buy from your company, what they hear from your competitors, what they would change about working with your company, what would make them stay or leave and anything else you want to know.  Then, do something with the information in the next meeting.

3.  Change venues for your meeting.  If you meet in person, have your meeting outside or at a coffee house.  If you meet on the phone, ask everyone to visit their local Kinko’s and hop on a videoconference.  Change venues each month.  It is amazing how a change in environment changes a mood.

Enjoy energizing sales team meetings this year.  Please send in your ideas to jill@meetingtowin.com.  We’ll share your ideas and give you all the credit. 

To get new, energizing sales team meeting topics every week, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas.  Never have another dull sales team meeting again – guaranteed!

This morning’s Wall Street Journal carried a story about Steve Jobs’ success as a result of “foot-dragging“.  The article more so shares Jobs’ high standard for user-experience.  Not only does he continue to create great experiences, he also creates a new definition of user-experience.  He didn’t simply try to do something that’s already been done and do it better, more efficiently or less expensive.  He created a new standard in user-experience and everyone else is just trying to catch up – or even just get in range.  He changed the game and, God willing, will continue to do so. 

So, how can we apply this business lesson to our own world?  As a team, ask yourselves, How can you change the game for your customers?  What user-experience can you create that could change the game?  What would it take to make it happen?

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

Before your next sales team meeting, ask everyone to read the article, How Apple Foot-Dragged to Victory.

Then, during your meeting, come up with a list of ideas to change the game for your customers. 

• Create a list of things you can do and control in the next 90 days to a year.
• Then, a list of more elaborate ideas that would take leadership and investment. 

You’ll have a range of ideas and quite possibly …innovate your industry!

Happy New Year!  My mission has always been to eliminate motivation-robbing Monday Morning Sales Team Meetings.  To continue that mission, Meeting to Win has launched a new store, Topics-To-Win.  Currently the store offers 90+ sales team meeting topics (more are added regularly) available for instant download.  There is no excuse for a boring sales meeting anymore. 

As a gift to the Meeting to Win Blog readers, I want to offer a free sample of a Meeting to Win Topic-To-Win. 

To get your SAMPLE Meeting to Win sales team meeting topic:

1. Simply visit our Store and browse the 90+ sales team meeting topics.
2. Choose one that is relevant for your team.
3. Send me a quick e-mail requesting your FREE Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Topic. 
4. I’ll send it to you. 
5. Use it for a great sales team meeting!
6. Tell your colleagues in Sales Management to do the same.

Thank you for reading the Meeting to Win Blog and being a part of our community and mission.

Thank you,

The Meeting to Win Team

As I often do, I try to look at successful leaders and try to determine what they actually DO. What makes them successful?  How does one leader turn around a bad situation while another can’t seem to make performance budge? 

Coaches of football teams are some of the most public leaders and it is fun to see their strategy in action.  Their success and failure is so public.  As the great Urban Meyer steps away from the Gators, much focus has been put on his success.  They point out over and over his two, what I call, silver bullets – (1) special teams and (2) score in the red zone.  It made me think of other “silver bullets” I’ve observed.  One Sales VP I had, who continues to be very successful, had this silver bullet – never have an open sales territory.  She beat the recruiting drum constantly because in our business sales dropped drastically within the first 30 days of an open territory.  Her silver bullet made her #1 over and over.  A VP of Operations I had used to take the list of 40+ company initiatives for his team and whittle it down to 2-3 focuses and took the heat for the other 37 things they weren’t executing on as effectively.   Because he always picked the right things, his performance was always the best and, you guessed it, there wasn’t much heat to take.

Do you have a silver bullet?  What is the one thing that matters to your performance above all else?  Determine your silver bullet and focus your energy there. 

Happy New Year!

Check out the New Meeting to Win Topics-to-Win Store. 

90+ Sales Team Meeting topics available for immediate download.

In support of my mission “to eliminate motivation-robbing sales team meetings”, I point you to Paul Castain’s Sales Meetings That Rock sales team meeting resource.

Start the new year off with a consistent, strategic, fun and productive sales team meeting commitment.   This tool can help.

Happy New Year!

Sales Managers, it’s Friday.  Time to ask ourselves some questions as we head into the weekend.

This week, did I…

• thank my sales team for their efforts?
• congratulate the successes?
• spend time in the field with my sales team and our customers?
• provide coaching on live opportunities?
• address problems openly and honestly before they can’t be fixed?
• hold an interactive and interesting sales team meeting?
• remove barriers for my sales team?
• manage internal people and processes so my team could focus on moving sales forward?
• reduce the noise?
• protect my team’s selling time?
• thank valuable customers?
• follow through on my commitments to my team?
• learn something new?
• play a daily part in moving deals forward?

There is still time to check off anything on your list.  

Have a great weekend.

For help creating interactive sales team meeting environments, subscribe to Meeting to Win.  Get sales team meeting content delivered to your inbox every week with Meeting to Win.