Archive for the ‘sales team’ Category
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
THE IMAGE TO WIN SERIES
I heard Tom Cruise on a talk show many years ago talking about the brand “Tom Cruise“. He is the product and the brand and everything he says, does, wears or is involved in adds or detracts from the Tom Cruise brand. This is the same for salespeople; just with a smaller audience in most cases.
Today’s installment of the Image to Win Series focuses on defining the brand of YOU. Tom Cruise knows what he wants his brand to be. What an important first step! Thinking about celebrities, you can assume that Madonna’s brand is very different from Barack Obama’s brand. Everything any of these public figures does sends a message and creates an image of their brand in the minds of the public. They know how to act, what to write, what to say, what to wear and where to be seen based on the image they want the public to have. They often have the advantage of publicists and managers who help guide them – let’s call them their VPs of Marketing.
Do you know the brand or image you want the world to see from you as a sales professional? Take a moment and write a list of 10 adjectives you want customers to use to describe your image or brand.
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Now, what actions would people have to see from you to create that image in their minds? Also, think about what they would see from you to detract from that image.
Tom Cruise jumped around on Oprah’s couch and severely detracted from the brand and image he spent 20+ years developing. I think I read he had also just fired his manager… Don’t leave your image to chance. Take the time to define your brand and what your brand stands for. Then, carefully choose your words, images, virtual presence and appearance to fit your brand.
We’ll continue with this Image to Win Series and dig into specifics on developing your brand. In the meantime, pay attention to brands you respect – Coke, Starbucks, Target, etc. Look at every action they take, where they show up, what messages they share, how their employees dress and every other detail of their brand. Should be a fun series!
Sales Managers, to take your team on an Image to Win journey, sign up for weekly sales team meeting agendas from Meeting to Win. The Image to Win sales meeting series starts in October.
Tags: sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea
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Saturday, May 1st, 2010
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Sales Team Meeting Idea – Sales Performance Book Club
We at Meeting to Win are on a mission to end boring sales team meetings. Boring sales team meetings put sales teams to sleep right at the beginning of the selling week when they should be at their very best. The last thing salespeople should have to do is recover from their sales team meeting so they can be productive each Monday. As part of our mission, we want to share a sales team meeting idea for Sales Managers who share our passion.
Sales Team Meeting Idea – Sales Performance Book Clubs
As a team,
Choose a business or sales book from Amazon.com (choose your own or subscribe to Meeting to Win and follow along with our quarterly Sales Performance Book Club – includes Discussion Guide and Chapter Exercises). Cover one or two new chapters each week during your weekly sales team meeting. Assign the chapters to the members of the team. Each week give them 20 minutes of the agenda to lead the team on that chapter’s topic.
They can:
- Lead a discussion on the information in the chapter.
- Ask the team to apply the lessons to their own business.
- Practice skills or ideas from the chapter.
- Pull one or two key lessons from the chapter.
- Set one action item based on the work done during this meeting.
- Get creative – give them the chance to do whatever they want with the chapter. You’ll see a new side of some team members.
Meeting to Win provides Sales Performance Book Club discussions each quarter as part of our Sales Meeting Agenda Subscription. We cover one new book each quarter. Next one, Mind of the Customer, starts in April 2010. Join us by subscribing today.
Join the MISSION TO END BAD SALES TEAM MEETINGS by having motivating sales team meetings that inspire your team to perform. Everyone wins!
Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, Owner of Meeting to Win. Meeting to Win provides Sales Team Meeting Agendas PLUS for Sales Managers who want to lead great sales team meetings.
Tags: energize sales team, motivate sales team, sales book club, sales performance, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea
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Thursday, April 15th, 2010
Nice title, huh? This article, although the title may suggest otherwise, is presented in a positive tone. There are actually more than 10 common practices that Sales Managers use that do more to frustrate their teams. Avoiding these practices takes planning and a strategic approach to sales management which is often lacking. Across the board organizations spend way more teaching their salespeople process and strategy than they do for their sales managers. Sales managers are really left to figure it out on their own. So, after polling many salespeople and using my own experience as a salesperson and a sales manager (not that I ever did any of these things!), I thought I would share a list of 10 Ways for Sales Managers to Ruin their Reputations and Lose their Team’s Respect.
1. Hold boring, unproductive or negative sales team meetings. I own Meeting to Win - clearly I’m passionate about this one. It’s a reputation killer!
2. Keep introducting the ”flavors of the month”. A Sales Manager gets an idea from a book, a colleague or divine inspiration. They march in Monday morning with “we are going to start….”. It usually comes with a new report, a task force or, at the very least, additional meetings. It dies in a week with no acknowledgment. It just quits coming up and salespeople learn to stop taking this stuff seriously.
3. Don’t protect selling time. Sales Managers who blindly ablige senior management emergency reports and other fire drills without ever putting up resistance in the protection of selling time are not helping their salespeople succeed. Salespeople begin to see them as the enemy working against their progress.
4. Hire bad team members. The team knows it and it affects the team’s performance and culture immediately.
5. Don’t address disruptive or underperforming reps in a timely manner. The team is watching how the managers address or put up with these things. Managers who address these things early and positively create a culture of performance. The opposite does, well, the opposite.
6. Don’t stand up for the team members. Sales Managers are a bit like parents. Discipline in private, praise in public. Salespeople need an ally, it should be their Sales Manager.
7. Take the credit for the team’s successes. Sales Managers who have successful teams do get the credit, they don’t need to give it to themselves.
8. Pass the blame for the team’s failures. This is an ugly one. Again, Sales Managers are getting the blame even if they try to pass it elsewhere. They just need to own it and fix it.
9. Forget what it’s like to be on the front lines. Sales Managers too often lose the feel for the field. They get too busy to get in the field, too. Sales Managers need to spend 3 days a week in the field with their reps and not lose the feel.
10. Mess up on a customer meeting. Sales Managers should enhance a customer meeting, not ruin hard work. Enough said.
BONUS: A rep just shared this great one with me! Schedule one-on-ones or meetings and then continually cancel and postpone them. The team members are planning around and preparing for these and emailing them to postpone the meeting for an hour or even 10 minutes is disrespectful and rude.
If you are guilty of any of these, now is the time to address it. Your reputation depends on it.
Tags: energize sales team, motivate sales team, sales leadership, sales team agenda.
Posted in CRM, agenda ideas, customer meeting, new managers, performance, sales management, sales manager tips, sales managers, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
(This week’s Meeting to Win focus is on Playing to Win instead of Playing to NOT Lose. Meeting to Win provides a new, fresh sales team meeting agenda every week for our Subscribers. Start having productive sales team meetings that result in superior sales performance with Meeting to Win.)
For some reason, there is often a sense of comfort when a prospective client asks us to do or provide something – see a demo, send me information, etc. We believe we have a solution that may meet their needs and we take their request as a sign that they may also believe that. As sales reps, happy to stay engaged with this prospect, we march off to provide the requested information. This prospective client may very well want this information and have a real plan to evaluate our solution and actually make a go/no-go decision on purchasing from us or not.
On the other hand, they may be making this request for any number of other reasons – and we may be playing along for any number of reasons. Those reasons can include:
- They are too nice to tell you that have no intention of spending a dime with you.
- They are busy and the fastest way to get rid of you is to send you on an errand.
- They are really good at kicking the tires, but have no history of actually buying.
- They stay in the eternal sales cycle never actually moving forward on anything. Professional window shoppers exist in every company.
- They are afraid if they tell you “no” that you will keep trying to sell them. No one enjoys being on the receiving end of this tactic.
- Your pursuit makes them feel important (ugly truth alert!).
- They think they have some power to make this decision. Meanwhile, someone else is actually making the decision at some other level.
- We feel “safe” to simply stay engaged in the sales cycle. We have something to report on our activity tracker, in our pipelines and during our team meeting updates. We’ve bought another week of activity.
- You look so happy when they ask you for something.
Those just a few of the reasons sales reps are asked to run these errands. How do sales reps stop being gophers? One way is to lay out the next few steps or commitments on both sides. Next time you are asked to run an errand, ask what decision they plan to make once you provide the requested information and by when. For example, if they ask to see a demo of your software. Find out what they hope to gain from the demo (the demo may not be what they even need) and what decision they plan to make upon seeing the demo (no-go, take the next step, involve other decision makers, etc) and by when they plan to make the decision (is there even a timeline?).
It feels “safe” to stay engaged and really….it’s a collosal waste of time. Stop playing it “safe” and start helping your clients make decisions that will ultimately help their businesses succeed. Get commitments before you run the errand – everyone wins when you have an efficient process.
(This week’s Meeting to Win focus is on Playing to Win instead of Playing to NOT Lose. Meeting to Win provides a new, fresh sales team meeting agenda every week for our Subscribers. Start having productive sales team meetings that result in superior sales performance with Meeting to Win.)
Tags: CRM, cusotmer meeting success, customer meeting success, energize sales team, sales leadership, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea, sales teams
Posted in CRM, customer meeting, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, meetings, performance, sales activity, sales management, sales managers, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, tips for meetings | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
(This Friday the Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Agenda, 10 Things You Don’t Know, will be delivered to all our subscribers. We are focused on treating prospective customers AND existing customers like prospective customers. Get a new Sales Team Meeting Agenda EVERY Friday by subscribing to Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Agendas today.)
Most sales reps get to enjoy some long-term customer relationships. Too often sales reps take these customers for granted and settle into an account management mode. Account management can mean many positive things, but in this case, we’ll call it account maintenance. It is not enough to just maintain an account. Your customer signed on for more than that. This week’s Meeting to Win theme is treating existing customers like prospective customers by helping them identify and secure solutions to their problems and tools to get them results.
In our 10 Things You Don’t Know article, we suggested several ways to treat these existing customers like hot prospects. Here is another way.
Get a Fresh Set of Eyes on an Existing Account
Ask a team mate to coffee. Ask them to review your clients’ website before meeting with you. Ask them to pretend this client was a target account that they were trying to acquire as a client. Then get together with them for coffee and ask their initial ideas for pursuing this client. Then, tell them everything you know about the account, who you know at the account, your theories on what you don’t know and your history with them. Now, ask them what you are missing. Find out how they would move forward to help this client.
Guaranteed you’ll walk away with a fresh perspective on an old account. You and your client win when you take a fresh look at their business.
Sales Team Meeting Idea:
- In your next sales team meeting, choose 1 existing account on the team that could use a fresh perspective. (Send an email to the team and ask them to nomimate their own accounts.)
- Choose one and let the team know the account name.
- Ask the team to research the account before the meeting.
- Ask the account owner to send a one-page overview of the account – what they know, who they know, history, etc.
- During the meeting, ask the Account Owner to share a 5 minute overview of the account that was not included in the pre-work.
- Ask the team to be the “fresh eyes” and share new ideas and perspective on the account.
- At the end of the hour, get a list of all the new ideas for the Account Owner.
- Account Owner should share what they will try from the list of new ideas.
Fieldwork Idea:
- Choose teams of 3 and, over the course of the next 3 weeks, each team should spend one hour per rep on one account per rep doing the same thing.
- Choose one rep’s account each week and get together for coffee, if possible. If not, do this on the phone.
- Each person on the team should end up with a list of fresh ideas and perspectives on one exisiting account.
- Get back together during a sales team meeting conference call and each rep should share the outcomes of gaining a fresh perspective on their exisiting account.
- What lessons did the team learn?
Enjoy the Fresh Eyes exercise. Join Meeting to Win to get interactive sales team meeting agendas for your sales team every week. We’d love to work with you!
Tags: CRM, existing customer, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea, sales teams
Posted in Account Management, CRM, New account, agenda ideas, agendas, best practice, down economy, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, meetings, sales activity, sales managers, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting, tips for meetings | No Comments »
Friday, March 19th, 2010
“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.
Tags: CRM, energize sales team, micromanagement, new hire, new sales rep, on-boarding, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agendas, underperforming sales rep
Posted in CRM, agenda ideas, best practice, communication, discipline, free sales team meeting topics, meetings, sales management, sales manager tips, sales managers, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas | No Comments »
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.)
Tags: cusotmer meeting success, pre-call planning, prepare for sales call, sales team meeting idea, sales teams
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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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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 »
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.)
Tags: energize sales team, motivate sales team, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting idea, troubleshooter
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