During the month of August Meeting to Win subscribers have been taking lessons from the past year’s top movies.  We’ve covered Limitless, Just Go With It and even Yogi Bear (who by the way, had a real sales problem).  This Friday, each subscriber is receiving The Social Network agenda.

Social networks have touched every life.  Whether you are a user or not, you are hit with the new vocabulary such as “tweets”, “like me”, “friend me”, “LinkIn with me”, etc.  We’ll ask teams to examine social networking and how it can advance – or even jeopardize – their cause in the marketplace. 

Become a Meeting to Win subscriber for exciting sales team meeting topics like The Social Network along with access to the entire Meeting to Win store.

A good friend of Meeting to Win, S. Anthony Iannarino, wrote a great article on my favorite topic – Sales Meetings.  I put a link to the article below – enjoy!

How to Make the Most of Sales Meetings

by S. Anthony Iannarino

Sales meetings, despite their sometimes less-than-flattering reputations, are necessary to effectively running a sales organization. Are we sometimes guilty of holding too many meetings? Yes, we are. Are we equally guilty of the occasional meeting with no disciplined agenda? Yes, sometimes they are a complete and total waste of your time.

But they don’t have to be a waste of time.

Read the rest…

For help creating productive sales team meeting environments, download the FREE Kick-Off to Great Sales Team Meetings Workshop Guide.

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

Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Topics available for purchase and immediate DOWNLOAD at the Meeting to Win Store. 

You may download the Meeting To Win Sales Team Meeting Topics-To-Win Catalog.  This was updated in January 2011 and is a list of 90+ sales team meeting topics available for immediate download on the Meeting to Win Store.

We currently offer 90+ sales team meeting topics across 21 different selling categories.  Each topic can take 20-50 minutes to execute depending on how you want to use it.

Enjoy interactive, interesting and inspiring sales team meetings with Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Topics.

Happy Selling,

Jill Myrick

Owner, Meeting to Win

jill@meetingtowin.com

www.meetingtowin.com

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!

As you can imagine, Sales Managers often call us to discuss challenges they face in regards to their sales team meetings.  We are addressing those challenges one-by-one in our Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter in an effort to eradicate the world of bad sales team meetings.  You are welcome. 

Today, we are addressing one we hear as a complaint from sales people and a challenge from sales managers.

Problem: 

Everyone agrees that regularly held sales team meetings add value to a salesperson’s week.  But…many, many teams have these meetings sporadically.  They are often scheduled last minute or, worse yet, cancelled last minute or, in the worst cases, abandoned completely.  Whatever the reason, salespeople experience inconsistent sales team meeting schedules.  We do know that regular, consistent communication is a key activity in any healthy relationship, professional or otherwise.  Why would it be any different on a sales team?  Lack of communication reduces morale, accountability and trust and increases miscommunication, fears and negativity.

Solution:

• Use the technology available to you to proactively schedule your sales team meetings.  Most find it’s best to have the meeting at the same time each week and simply put a recurring appointment on the calendars of the sales team.  (You may want to change quarterly just to keep things fresh.)  That way, you can include an agenda, call-in information, etc right in the meeting notice.  The sales team will plan around this meeting since it is part of their schedule already.
• This next one is the most frustrating thing for a salesperson.  DON’T CANCEL THE MEETING!  Too often, this cancellation goes out at the last minute or every week.  The sales team begins to not believe you when you schedule this meeting.  It is disrespectful to ask salespeople to plan around a meeting that you end up cancelling regularly.  Don’t treat their schedule any different than you want your schedule treated.  It is better to just not schedule the meeting in the first place.
• Salespeople in particular can get very disconnected. Often they are out in the field by themselves all week taking care of customers.  Give them an hour a week to stay connected with their teammates.  This gives them a chance to feed off of the team’s energy, share frustrations, brainstorm solutions and simply connect with those in their shoes.  Don’t deprive them of this motivational hour.
• As the Sales Manager, your team is your only job. Without them, you wouldn’t have all those other tasks anyway. So, make them your priority and let nothing stop you from your weekly team meeting.  They are your job – don’t let other things become your priorities.  At Franklin Covey, they ask managers “What is the one thing that has to happen or else nothing else matters?”.  For you, it’s that your team performs.  Nothing else you do will ultimately matter unless your team performs. A weekly sales team meeting is a key activity to have on your list of top priorities.

This is such a common problem – I hope this is helpful for Sales Managers.  Sometimes managers hesitate to schedule their meetings because they don’t know what they’ll talk about.  Those managers may want to subscribe to Meeting to Win.  We send subscribers 60+ minutes of sales team meeting content every week.  You’ll never lack for great sales topics for your sales team meetings again.  Join today.

 To see solutions to other sales team meeting problems, visit other articles in this series:

Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter – Problem: The Dominator

Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter – Problem: Chirp…Chirp…

Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter – Problem: Latecomers

Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter – Problem: Data Dump

For a list of ideas for your upcoming sales meeting, visit Sales Team Meeting Ideas You Can Use Today.

It’s Monday morning, is your team looking forward to their weekly sales team meeting?  If you decided to watch the football game last night instead of plan for your Monday morning meeting, we are here to help with a topic you can use this morning.  We’re football fans, too….

(For help every week, subscribe to Meeting to Win.)

Typically, when a Sales Manager doesn’t have a good meeting planned in advance, they resort to the “let’s go around to each person and hear about your week last week” stand-by topic.  Of course, one person gives their verbal activity tracker while everyone else checks e-mails. 

Instead…  try a twist on the last minute topic.

Sales Team Meeting Topic:  Highs & Lows

Ask each team member to share 2 highs and 1 low from the past week. 

In 2 minutes or less, each person on the call should:

• Share 2 Highs (Activities or events that created opportunities or moved existing opportunities forward.)
• Share 1 Low (Setbacks in customer accounts or pipelines.)
  • Everyone should keep track of the team’s lows for later.
• When each person is done sharing their highs and low, they should call on the next person. 
• Continue doing this until everyone has shared.
• Now, each person should share one lesson they can take from (1) thier own low and (2) from another team member’s low.
• To end, celebrate the highs – add up the revenue, new clients or any significant data from the Highs list.  (It’s great to see progress.)

Hopefully, this provided you with a productive start to a Monday with an interactive topic filled with practical lessons for the week ahead.

Join Meeting to Win and do better than last-minute every week.  Your team will be provided with 60 minutes of interactive and positive sales team meeting topics, complete with pre-work, sales performance book clubs, critical sales skill practice and meeting management tips every week.  We’d love to work with you and your team.  Learn more About Meeting to Win.

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.