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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.

Nice title, huh?   This article, although the title may suggest otherwise, is presented in a positive tone.  There are actually more than 10 common practices that Sales Managers use that do more to frustrate their teams.  Avoiding these practices takes planning and a strategic approach to sales management which is often lacking.  Across the board organizations spend way more teaching their salespeople process and strategy than they do for their sales managers.  Sales managers are really left to figure it out on their own.  So, after polling many salespeople and using my own experience as a salesperson and a sales manager (not that I ever did any of these things!), I thought I would share a list of 10 Ways for Sales Managers to Ruin their Reputations and Lose their Team’s Respect.

1.  Hold boring, unproductive or negative sales team meetings.  I own Meeting to Win - clearly I’m passionate about this one.  It’s a reputation killer!

2.  Keep introducting the ”flavors of the month”.  A Sales Manager gets an idea from a book, a colleague or divine inspiration.  They march in Monday morning with “we are going to start….”.  It usually comes with a new report, a task force or, at the very least, additional meetings.  It dies in a week with no acknowledgment.  It just quits coming up and salespeople learn to stop taking this stuff seriously.

3.  Don’t protect selling time.  Sales Managers who blindly ablige senior management emergency reports and other fire drills without ever putting up resistance in the protection of selling time are not helping their salespeople succeed.  Salespeople begin to see them as the enemy working against their progress.

4.  Hire bad team members.  The team knows it and it affects the team’s performance and culture immediately.

5.  Don’t address disruptive or underperforming reps in a timely manner.  The team is watching how the managers address or put up with these things.  Managers who address these things early and positively create a culture of performance.  The opposite does, well, the opposite.

6.  Don’t stand up for the team members.  Sales Managers are a bit like parents.  Discipline in private, praise in public. Salespeople need an ally, it should be their Sales Manager.

7.  Take the credit for the team’s successes.  Sales Managers who have successful teams do get the credit, they don’t need to give it to themselves.

8.  Pass the blame for the team’s failures.  This is an ugly one.  Again, Sales Managers are getting the blame even if they try to pass it elsewhere.  They just need to own it and fix it.

9.  Forget what it’s like to be on the front lines.  Sales Managers too often lose the feel for the field.  They get too busy to get in the field, too.  Sales Managers need to spend 3 days a week in the field with their reps and not lose the feel.

10.  Mess up on a customer meeting.  Sales Managers should enhance a customer meeting, not ruin hard work.  Enough said.

BONUS:  A rep just shared this great one with me!  Schedule one-on-ones or meetings and then continually cancel and postpone them.  The team members are planning around and preparing for these and emailing them to postpone the meeting for an hour or even 10 minutes is disrespectful and rude. 

If you are guilty of any of these, now is the time to address it.  Your reputation depends on it.

I received this article today from my Salesopedia subscription.  Two terrifying truths jumped out at me immediately.

1. “Weekly sales meetings have killed more manager authority and respect than probably any other activity a manager engages in with the possible exception of the ride along.” 
2. “They have also driven a great number of high performers to the competition, one of which may be my client Richard who is one of the top 5 sellers in his company’s 300 member sales force.”

Read more about the importance of executing effective sales team meetings in Paul McCord’s article, 

4 Steps to Creating Powerful, Effective Sales Meetings.

Enjoy Paul’s insights and direction and start having better meetings this Monday.    It is critically important.

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.)

We at Meeting to Win are big fans of Paul Castain and his work.  During our 3-week Sales Team Meeting Agenda series on Maximizing Customer Meetings we thought you may enjoy Paul’s thougths on starting your meetings with impact. 

Starting Your Meetings with Impact

by Paul Castain of Sales Playbook

OK, pop quiz. How long does it take to make an impression on someone? 30 seconds? 10? Less? …
Here’s something that you can do in your very next client/prospect meeting …

Read the rest here.

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.

9.  My team ties successes in the field to something they learned during a sales team meeting.

(A)  Yes, often.

(B)  Rarely if ever.

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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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.)

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.