No matter how many sales team meetings you conduct each year – weekly, monthly or otherwise – there are a handful of topic categories that make sense to re-visit every year. As you make your 2012 sales team meeting plan,here are 10 topic categories most sales teams can benefit from reviewing every year.

1. SWOT. Look at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and make a plan to address those each year. They change from year to year.

2. Objections. These can also change year to year based on the economic environment, your industry, competitor moves and your own pricing, products and business practices.

3. Seasonal selling plans. Before selling seasons or holiday seasons, it makes sense to set a plan to either capitalize on a selling season or keep deals moving during a vacation/holiday season.

4. Current Events. Take time each year to look at the economic and business environment at your top customers. What is happening in their business and how should you respond. Your customers’ businesses change year to year.

5. Book Discussion. Read a new book and discuss as a team. Keep growing, developing new ideas and gaining knowledge.

6. Guest Speakers. Invite guests to join or lead meetings each year. Fresh perspective is a great infusion of energy.

7. Pipelines.  Look at pipelines, analyze current pipelines and make sure everyone is clear what a healthy pipeline looks like and actions to take to get there.

8. Challenges. At least each year, put common challenges on the table for discussion. Leave with solutions to 5-10 common challenges and make progress year after year. Don’t settle for the same problems year after year. Be problem solvers and, therefore, leaders in your companies.

9. Start, Stop, Continue. Assess your sales practices for what is working, what is no longer working and what you should try.

10. Competition. Take time to review and analyze your competitors. They are changing year after year. Make sure you know what they are up to and what you should do to compete.

As you plan your 2012 meetings consider these 10 topics. Of course, sales team meeting topics from these categories are available at the Meeting to Win Store.  Subscribers get unlimited access to 100+ topics across 20+ categories.  Visit the Meeting to Win Store to review topics.  Become a Meeting to Win Subscriber for access to all topics.

Happy New Year from Meeting to Win.

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.

School is back in session for most students and the topic of getting along with one another is always a central theme in classrooms. What a great place and age to learn to resolve “workplace” problems.

On that topic, I wanted to share 3 ways to reduce workplace conflicts.
1. Man Up.  Do not ever send an e-mail about a sensitive issue or a conflict. The only e-mail that is acceptable is one that requests a time to sit down and talk. Schedule enough time with the person involved and bring your issue to them face-to-face.

2.  It’s NOT About YOU.  When having your face-to-face discussion about whatever issue you are facing, do not make it personal.  Talk about the situation, not the person.  For example, if someone keeps disrespecting you in team meetings, instead of saying “YOU always interrupt me” or “YOU always put down my ideas, WHY do you do that?” try something like “When I’m interrupted by your comments during meetings, I get the impression that you don’t value my contributions.  Is my impression correct?“  Then be quiet and let them answer.  The conversation is already less confrontational, but no less direct and clear.

3.  If you must TATTLE, do it like a Kindergartner.  Kids are very open communicators and we can learn something from that.  Typically, before a kid gets an adult involved in their conflict, we hear something like “I’m gonna tell”.  Here’s a life lesson.  There are times that an issue needs to be escalated and resolved at a higher level.  If you’ve practiced #1 and #2, this should rarely, if ever, happen, but if it does, the right way to escalate is to include the other person(s) in the conflict.  Say something like, “I realize that we both feel strongly about this issue and we disagree about how to handle it.  We must get it resolved for the sake of the customer/project/business.  I plan to involve [insert supervisor's name here] to get their opinion and decide how to move forward.  Would you like to be involved in that conversation?” 

Put these ideas into practice and enjoy workplace communication and collaboration like never before.  Have a great day!

Sales Team Meeting Agenda on this topic coming soon. 

Subscribe to Meeting to Win and get (1) a new 60-minute sales team meeting agenda every week AND (2) access to the Sales Team Meeting Topic Library (100 topics to download anytime).

Heading into the Fall selling season, Meeting to Win is offering a new level of access for Meeting to Win subscribers – UNLIMITED ACCESS to the Meeting to Win Topic Library (See Catalog HERE).

 Meeting to Win is committed to helping Sales Managers and Sales Trainers execute productive sales team meetings with topics that are relevant, motivating and inspiring. 

We offer over 100 sales team meeting topics across 21 different Selling Success Categories and deliver a NEW topic every week to subscribers. 

You can either subscribe and get the library and the new topic each week or buy the topics as needed at the Meeting to Win STORE.

Either way, better sales team meeting begin with better topics.  Enjoy the Fall Selling Season armed with an arsenal of sales team meeting topics.

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.

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!