“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.
We are in the middle of our Maximizing Customer Meetings Sales Team Meeting Agenda series. To enhance the series, we’ve called on some top selling experts to share their strategies for maximizing customer meetings. This post is brought to us by Mary Donato, President at Applied Principles, a sales and marketing professional services firm that helps Fortune 1000 companies achieve sales and marketing excellence.
The Win-Win Sales Call by Mary Donato
How to get centered on your client so you both succeed.
As the Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, I have had the opportunity to interact with many outstanding marketing and sales organizations. Recently, I observed one member’s top sales consultant prepare for an important initial call with a prospective customer. It was like listening to a well-orchestrated play: He knew what questions he wanted to ask at the beginning of the call and set an objective to get a complete list of the client’s issues before having any discussion about a solution to their problem. He even anticipated objections and how he would respond. By mentally going through the conversations in advance, the consultant was thoroughly prepared for the call before stepping into the client’s office. The goal of these efforts was to insure that he could find a solution that would meet the customer’s specific needs. I asked him what he would do if the solution wasn’t a good fit, and he replied that he would advise the prospect, stop the sales cycle, and move on to the next opportunity. Why am I highlighting this story? Far too many salespeople don’t attempt—or don’t know how—to truly understand client needs and what would be an effective solution for them. In the end, time, energy, and money are wasted, both on the seller’s and buyer’s part. So, what makes a great sales call? A good start is having a philosophy of caring deeply for what it takes to make the customer successful. The Sales Performance Group (SPG) at FranklinCovey, based in Salt Lake City, has a sales training and coaching curriculum called “Helping Clients Succeed,” which provides a practical framework and process for understanding the client’s exact needs and issues. The founder of SPG, Mahan Khalsa, author of Let’s GetReal or Let’s Not Play, offers several key principles for becoming “maniacally” client-focused:
SALES ISN’T ABOUT SELLING It’s about helping clients succeed. The job of a salesperson is to provide expanded awareness of possibilities and superior choices to facilitate a process for clients to make decisions in their own best interests.
INTENT COUNTS MORE THAN TECHNIQUE Get crystal clear about your intent before you pick up the phone or walk through the door, because it’s going to affect everything else that follows. Make sure it’s an intent that’s focused on the client’s best interests.
SOLUTIONS HAVE NO INHERENT VALUE Solutions derive value only from the problems they solve and the results they produce. To truly understand client needs, you need to move off the solution (a counterintuitive move, especially for salespeople).You must, instead, objectively explore issues, problems, and desired results, as well as what criteria the client will use to make a decision.
NO GUESSING Too often, a question you want to ask the client may come to mind, but for whatever reason you don’t ask it. For example, “From what you have described, you seem to be happy with your current solution.Why would you consider changing?” or “How much funding have you allocated for this project?”or “What criteria will you be using to make your decision?”To help clients succeed, you need to learn how to ask these hard questions in a soft way. If you don’t ask these questions, it leaves you to guess the answers. If there’s a fit, work together, make money, and have fun. If there is no fit, find out quickly, shake hands, and part friends. And if your solution doesn’t fit, or they have more pressing needs, maybe you can recommend where they can find another answer. By doing this, you could become a trusted advisor to the client.
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:
A bulleted list of the information the sales representative learned about the customer’s needs.
A list of action items for both the sales rep and the customer along with time lines.
A couple of bullets with high-level ideas on possible solutions you discussed while meeting.
Possible pricing scenarios (if discussed in meeting).
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 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.)
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.)
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.
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 …
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.)
(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.)
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.
