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Don’t Wing It by Kathleen Steffey

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

(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.)

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Know Your Risks (Includes Sales Team Meeting Idea)

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

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.

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Neal Boortz is Outraged. You Should Be, Too.

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Neal Boortz is outraged this morning.  To be fair, no matter which day I choose to write this, I could start my post the same way and, to be fair again, there is a lot of stuff to get outraged about if you enjoy being outraged.  Today’s particular outrage is about a school district here in the Atlanta area spending $400K of federal stimulus money to take 200 teachers to a conference in Hollywood, CA for 4 days of learning and development.  The justification for this includes the idea that the teachers will come back from this trip excited about what they learned and eager to implement what they learned in the classrooms.

This topic made me think about the annual sales meeting that many salespeople just came back from.  January is a hot time for this.  It is typically fair to say that salespeople learn a lot during these annual meetings and do come back excited.  But then what happens? Well, the same thing that will happen to these teachers.  Back home things continue to churn and students need to pass tests, parent conferences need to continue, a failing student needs to be addressed, discipline problems continue, the school play needs to be rehearsed, tests need to be graded and so on.  Before these teachers realize it, they are doing exactly the same things they were doing before they left for the conference and the conference was nothing more than a pep rally and a chance to socialize and sightsee with peers from around the country.  Lfie can get in the way of great intentions after all.

Hopefully what will happen is this instead.  The school system will follow this Hollywood conference with a plan to implement the top ideas from these meetings that will make the most impact on key areas this school district needs to address.  Whether that is increasing graduation rate, implementing more sports programs, raising the SAT test scores or reducing absenteeism.  What is the plan and what is the plan to hold these teachers accountable to bringing back the change that will make a difference?

If you’ve just had your annual sales meeting, what is different in the way you help customers because of the time you invested to attend your meeting?  Some companies follow these up effectively and many, many do not.  Everyone comes back after the company has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and selling time and salespeople have invested selling and family time and …. do the very same things they did before they left.  Sure, they are a little excited, but are also now 4 days behind in their day jobs.  Now it’s catch up time instead of implement-what-you’ve-learned time.

Bottom line, you should be outraged like Neal if your company dragged you half way around the country for a big rah-rah session with no plan to advance, reinforce and apply the valuable lessons and information you absorbed during your meeting.  I know I would be.

(Post brought to you by Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win.  Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting training topics.  Each agenda offers 60 minutes of sales development content along with ideas to reinforce, advance and apply the training in the field.  Join us by subscribing today.)

Posted in discipline, down economy, how to have productive sales team meetings, management tips, meetings, new years resolutions, sales management, sales manager tips, sales meetings, sales team, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting, tips for meetings | No Comments »

Troubleshooters Gain 100 Selling Hours in 2010

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

(To get a Sales Team Meeting Agenda and lead your team through a Troubleshooters exercise, download Troubleshooters from our STORE now.)

What could you do with 100+ ADDITIONAL selling hours per year? I did the math on this a few years ago and since then have been committed to solving nagging little troubles that arise.  Let me explain.

Often a sales rep will face a recurring and nagging trouble such as invoice issues, late deliveries, collections, implementation schedule conflicts and other customer service/post-sale issues.   Because of my own frustration with these things, I’ve added up the minutes I spend on these issues in a typical sales week.  Believe it or not, 2 hours is a low average.  And, more eye-opening is that it tends to be the same trouble over and over again.  So, this could be a frustration or … an opportunity. 

What if I solved that ONE trouble and gained 2 hours per week back in my selling week?  I chose to make solving that one trouble a priority.  Even when I wasn’t able to completely make it go away, I was able to drastically reduce the time I spent on it each week.  The hard part was to stop and take the time to find a solution instead of just living with it.  What I got was over 100 hours of additional selling time that year – and, in most cases, happier customers and reduced frustration every day.   Everyone wins!

So, quit living with that recurring frustration and get your life back – or at least 100 hours of it.

(This post brought to you by Meeting to Win, provider of sales team agendas for Sales Managers.  Troubleshooters agenda comes out this Friday.  Join us and lead your team through an exercise to take back 2 hours per week per salesperson.  If you have 8 salespeople on your team times 2 hours per week times 50 weeks per year you get an ADDITIONAL 800 SELLING HOURS PER YEAR for your team.  It’s worth the time to solve problems.)

(To get a Sales Team Meeting Agenda and lead your team through a Troubleshooters exercise, download Troubleshooters from our STORE now.)

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Posted in agenda ideas, agendas, how to have productive sales team meetings, sales managers, sales meetings, sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting, tips for meetings | No Comments »

Pull Up Your Anchors – The Sea Awaits

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

Being a successful salesperson takes unbelieveable self-discipline.  It is a job that requires proactive activity to move forward.  At the same time, there are enough things to simply react to that a salesperson can stand still instead of move forward.  I am in the process of writing a sales team meeting agenda to help our subscribers identify their anchors and then figure out how to pull them up occassionally so they can move forward into the sea of opportunity that exists for them.   I thought I’d share the concept in a blog post, also.

How can you tell if you have anchors?  Here are a few questions to answer:

  • Have you identified a new problem to solve for your current clients?
  • Have you presented new ideas and solutions to help them meet their goals?
  • Does your pipeline grow and move at a good pace?
  • Have you added new customers, new contacts and new referral partners to your client list in the past year?
  • Are your sales growing?

If you answered “no” to any of those questions, you may need to find and pull up your anchors so you can move forward and grow your business.  Anchors are the things you are doing instead of developing and expanding your business.

To get started, think about everything you do in a week to simply maintain, or not lose, your current business.  These are your anchors.  Examine those activities closely and determine how to use those to grow your business or how to delegate them to a capable associate with different responsibilties (customer service, etc).  Anchors can be good sometimes.  Occassionally it makes sense to stop, drop your anchor and get ready to move forward again.  Just don’t sit there too long. 

Now, replace your anchors with business development activities.  Your ship will be sailing again before you know it. 

Pull up your anchors – the sea awaits.

 

Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, Owner of Meeting to Win, LLC.  Join our growing community of subscribers for weekly sales team meeting topics in a 60-minute format.  Agendas include practical exercises, practice sessions, discussion topics and leadership opportunities.  Grow your sales with Meeting to Win.

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The Q4 Push – Are You In? The Time to Act on 2010 is NOW!

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

j0433410This has been a tough year for many.  It’s Q4 and salespeople could be feeling tired and ready to “write this one off” and take another shot at it in 2010.   Here’s the problem with that.  Momentum is a very cool thing and it’s great when it’s working for you and horrible when it’s working against you.  So, even if 2009 is a lost cause in terms of goal achievement, there is no better time (well, a month ago would have been better, but…) to get momentum going for 2010.

To gain more and more momentum as you close in on 2010, try these strategies:

The first five on the list come from the advice my friend Alvin of Tactivity shared in a LinkedIn discussion. I’ve added (and repeated) a few ideas that have helped me, also.

  1. If you’re on pace to the President’s Club in your organization, then increase your activity.
  2. If what you are doing hasn’t been working, then complete a thorough cleansing of the pipeline/funnel: Is it real? Is it good business? Can you win?
  3. Prioritize your activities around the health of your newly cleaned funnel
  4. Brainstorm a list of possible actions for your top opportunities; then choose only the 3-5 activities that will really advance them towards closure
  5. Go get it done!
  6. Conduct business reviews with existing clients to secure relationships, identify risks and uncover new ways to help them.
  7. Examine your territory for new opportunities a tough economy has turned up.
  8. Increase your sales activity.  Oh, did we already mention that one?  Action creates action, energy creates energy.  Make more calls!
  9. Solidify referral partners.  Decide to gain 20 referral partners and stay in touch with them, ask for referrals, be accessible and be someone they would be proud to refer (hint: send them referrals, also).
  10. Stay “on the grid” with prospects and existing customers.  Share useful information to help them run their business more effectively.  Don’t be out of sight or you know where you’ll be…. Out of mind.  Many of their sales reps have “gone dark” lately as companies do lay-offs and reorganizations.  Just being there may differentiate you!
  11. Have a team meeting every week to celebrate successes, share ideas, collaborate on hot deals and challenge each other.  This team accountability and celebration is fuel for your sales engine.  (You know we couldn’t leave this one out!)
  12. BONUS:  Increase sales activity.  In my experience, there is NO substitute.  Commit to accelerated sales activity in Q4 if you do nothing else.  Yeah, it’s worth mentioning 3 times. 

2010 can be an amazing year.  Salespeople that build momentum now can get a head start and be rewarded by helping more customers in 2010 than they ever thought possible.  Not to mention, for some 2009 can be a distant memory….  Get started today.  Staring in January 2010 will be TOO LATE.

To help sales teams build momentum during Q4, Meeting to Win is running a Q4 Push Promotion which means…free sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers.  Sales Managers can subscribe for sales team meeting agendas and get all of Q4 for free.  First payment of $10/month won’t be charged until January 2010 (sales managers can unsubscribe any time in Q4 and never be charged).  The agendas are designed to motivate sales teams and accelerate performance while continually gaining and maintaining incredible momentum. 

Read more HERE then join us by subscribing HERE and entering the Promo Code “Q4PUSH”.

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10 Tips for Better Weekly Sales Team Meetings in 2009

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Sales Team Meetings – 10 Tips for Winning Sales Team Meetings

Sales Managers can immediately impact their team’s performance and morale by committing to productive and positive weekly sales team meetings. This Monday morning meeting sets the tone for the selling week. At the end of each weekly sales team meeting, each participant should feel more equipped to compete and win. This is an expensive hour when you consider your entire sales team is NOT selling for one full hour. These tips can help you invest that hourly wisely. Your return should be more momentum, better morale and sales success.

Meeting to Win, LLC (www.meetingtowin.com) wants to share 10 tips to help you lead more productive, positive meetings right away. Use these tips or subscribe to Meeting to Win agendas (https://www.meetingtowin.com/subscribe). Either way, commit to having great meetings starting next week.

1. Send an agenda in advance. First of all, this keeps a sales manager accountable to planning a productive meeting instead of just jumping on a weekly call and resorting to the roundtable update approach.
The agenda should change for each meeting. If you send the same template each week, they will stop looking at it. Keep agenda’s fresh and relevant.
When sales people know the manager is being proactive and planning for their meetings, they are more likely to take them more seriously, also.

2. Invite RELEVANT guest speakers. Who could join your sales team call and share information that will help your sales people sell more?
This could be an internal product specialist who could clear up confusion or answer questions about a new product offering.
This could be a customer who could give a short talk on their experience working with your company or team.
This could be someone from your marketing team to share some current market research relevant to your customers.

3. Share ownership for a productive meeting with the entire team. Share meeting planning and executing responsibilities with team members. For example, someone can be the timekeeper, someone can lead an agenda topic, someone can send the agenda out in advance, someone can secure a guest speaker and so on. It’s everyone’s responsibility to use this time wisely.

4. Have a Team Book Club. Continually build business acumen by reading and discussing a current business book as a team. Read the chapter before the meeting and discuss it during the meeting for a set amount of time.

5. Assign pre-work. This doesn’t have to be a huge project, just a small amount of preparation so they can contribute to a successful, helpful sales team meeting. And, again, meetings are always more interesting when more people have input.
Give them an article to read before the meeting.
Ask them to think about a topic and be prepared with their thoughts or ideas on that topic.
Ask them to research something for the sales team.

6. Reinforce recent sales training. Most sales training organizations have reinforcement modules designed for sales managers to use after the formal training. Use these. Each meeting, asks a different sales person to “teach” the next module. This encourages the team to study and practice the sales methodologies and skills that will make them more successful.

7. Have fun. Celebrate even the smallest successes and wins every week.

8. Don’t do a data dump. If administrative things can be shared via email, do so. Give the team a chance to ask questions or make clarifications on something they received via e-mail, but do not dump all this info on them during their meeting.

9. Stick to the allotted time. Enough said?

10. Share Best Practices. Make sure this is on the agenda. Ask one sales person to share something they have tried that is working. They should be able to tell the rest of the team how and why they did it and share any tools that will help someone else try it.

BONUS TIP: Analyze losses. It’s painful, but top sales team do this consistently. Everyone can learn from these discussions.

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