“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:
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.)
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.)
We are packaging our posts and sending them once per week to subscribers each Monday morning. To get your Meeting to Win Posts every Monday, subscribe now.
(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.
I came across this article and liked Kelley’s perspective on effective sales team meetings. I want to share his insights with our readers. Enjoy! (To get new sales team meeting agendas each week visit Meeting to Win.)
Sales meetings are a fact of life and business and they are important for a variety of reasons.
-They allow larger companies to address the entire sales team as a group.
-They offer opportunities to provide additional training (product, skills, and technical).
-They help keep your team up-to-date.
-And, they present a tremendous opportunity for your team to connect and develop stronger relationships with each other.
Unfortunately, many sales meetings are unproductive and not nearly as effective as they could be. Here are a few of the most common mistakes people make when scheduling and running sales meetings.
(Each week Meeting to Win provides a 60-minute sales team meeting agenda for our subscribers. Each week we cover sales and business topics all designed to help salespeople develop as sales professionals, sell more and better serve their customers. The agendas are packed with exercises, discussions and ways for your team to grow. This week’s agenda is Turn Gatekeepers Into Escorts. Visit us at Meeting to Win to learn more.)
How do you turn your current Gatekeepers into Escorts? Imagine… those currently keeping you from bringing solutions to decision makers actually setting up the meeting for you to do just that. Seem like a dream? It’s not…
To do this, sales reps need to think differently about their gatekeepers. First of all, let’s define gatekeeper for the sake of this discussion.
A GATEKEEPER is anyone who is preventing or hindering you from working with a decision maker. These people often take the form of a
receptionist,
executive assistant,
RFP committee,
manager in charge of finding a vendor and so on.
To think differently about gatekeepers, consider the important job they do. RFP committiees are doing the legwork of gathering information to help their company solve a problem or get a result. Executive Assistants are limiting the interruptions of a senior leader focused on his or her company’s key priorities. An IT Director is using his or her expertise to compare requirements with capabilities before involving decision makers in the business decisions.
To salespeople who want access to those decision makers, gatekeepers can be seen as nuisances instead of part of an important part of the selling process. If you are currently being hindered by gatekeepers, here is something to try.
Consider their specific job and the business reasons they may be keeping you from the decision makers.
Respect their position and the insider information a good relationship is sure to provide.
Now, how can you address their needs in a way that will motivate them to escort you and your ideas to the decision makers? Determine what criteria the gatekeeper needs to satisfy to move you to the decision makers.
Then, share your desire to meet with those making and impacted by the buying decisions. Let the gatekeeper know why (it’s got to be for their benefit, not yours) and ask how you can work together to get them comfortable and motivated to bring this solution to decision makers. Figure out how to help them do their job and ultimately make them look great.
Now you are working together and you are actually helping them succeed in their gatekeeper role.
Gatekeepers do serve a purpose and are not always easy to deal with. They sometimes abuse their power, make poor decisions and often don’t seem to have the company’s best interest in mind. Teach them how to bring great solutions to their company by partnering with them instead of trying to run them over. You’ll be more efficient and enjoy the process more.
Sales Team Meeting Idea:
At your next sales team meeting, ask each team member to identify the gatekeepers in each of their pipeline opportunities. Figure out the important role they play in the overall decision process. Then, figure out how each rep can help them do their gatekeeper job more effectively so the deal can move forward to the real decision makers.
At the end of your meeting, each rep should have a clear gatekeeper strategy for one deal in their pipeline.
For more in depth exercises each week, subscribe to Meeting to Win sales team meeting agendas by visiting us here. The next agenda is Turn Gatekeepers Into Escorts (delivered Friday, February 12th, 2010).
To download the Sales Team Meeting Agenda (60 Minutes), Turn Gatekeepers Into Escorts, visit our Store here.
(Make sure to check out the Sales Meeting Idea at the bottom of this post.)
This week we wrote about annual sales meetings that many companies invest in each year. The problem with many is that the reps get back to the field and there is no post-meeting plan – or support – to implement any new ideas, training or on-going focus. The excitement generated by the fancy meeting is not sustainable and all the company has left are the bills from the party.
If your company has made little effort to bring the annual sales meeting ideas back to the territories and customers, there are things you can do to ensure return on the investment you made. In life we ultimately take responsibility for our own success and, in the case of salespeople, the success of our customers, also. You’ve made a significant investment of one of your precious resources – your time. Now, it’s time to get a return on that investment.
5 Ways to Get a Return on Your Investment of Time in the Annual Sales Meeting:
1. Don’t try to do everything. Pick 1 or 2 ideas, best practices or skills learned during the meeting. Figure exactly where you can try those things each week. Practice your 1 or 2 new things each week until they become habit. Ask a co-worker to hold you accountable or put the action on your calendar. Pick a follow-up date to see what results you have seen from implementing the new actions.
2. Ask your Sales Manager if your team can devote 10-15 minutes of each sales team meeting to new ideas, best practices or training from the annual sales meeting. The team can choose 1-3 things that they believe can make the biggest impact on the team’s success. Each week a different member of the team is responsible for bringing a discussion or exercise to support the focuses from the annual sales meeting.
3. If you heard helpful information from your company’s CFO, Marketing Officer, CEO or Trainer, invite them as a guest speaker to an upcoming team sales meeting. Be prepared to go deeper on their area of expertise to apply it to helping customers. These internal resources can help you help your customers more effectively.
4. If there was a new initiative or training program that is being contradicted in the field, bring that to the attention of sales management. This happens often as different departments have competing goals. For example, a client of mine spent a considerable amount of time and money on sales training designed to help reduce discounting. The behavior was rampant and cut into their margins drastically. The training was delivered and everyone left with solid skills to reduce discounting. Almost as soon as they got back in the field, Marketing launched a new product and brought it to market at a 40% discount! All the marketing materials, sales scripts and contests were focused on selling as much as they could right away using the 40% discount as the main sales tool. This is absurd …and really not that unusual. As a sales rep, you can respectfully raise this concern with your sales manager and at least get the conversation going while getting some direction in the midst of contradictory messages.
5. Hopefully your annual sales team meeting provided an opportunity for you to get to know peers from other parts of the country and even the world. Choose 2 reps from outside your immediate team and commit to staying in touch with them. Put a call to them on your calendar monthly or quarterly and discuss best practices, ideas and customers. Best practices have a way of staying in the territory where they are discovered. If you take one or two top best practices from one or two other territories you will have a competitive edge and more successful customers. Bring these ideas to your own team after you learn them and the whole team has an edge.
So, after years of annual sales team meetings which, by the way, are exciting and fun and usually filled with great learning opportunities, these are the top 5 ways I’ve learned to get an amazing return on my investment. I hate things that waste my time – with these practices the annual sales meeting never did.
Good luck!
SALES MEETING IDEA:
Ask your team to read this post before your next sales team meeting.
During the meeting, as a team, choose 2 things from this list or other actions you can take to bring your annual sales meeting back to the field.
Decide what results you are looking for by implementing the changes. Be specific about the results you are looking for. If you learned new skills to negotiate price, you might want your result to be lowered average discount. Pick the specific number so you will know if you are moving the needle or not.
Then, pick a follow-up date to check your results.
At the next sales team meeting following that date discuss the results and everyone’s experience trying the new skills or ideas. Decide how to move forward.
Hopefully, your team will experience actual behavior change by practicing the new skills or ideas in the field and your return is worth the investment. Happy Selling.
(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 equip their teams to win. Subscribe by visiting us at: http://meetingtowin.com/)
