The Monday Morning Sales Team Meeting is a critically important hour in the week of a salesperson.  The right meetings can motivate and inspire a salesperson for the week ahead.  Unfortunately, there are so many things that can go wrong in this one little hour – .025% of a salesperson’s week can set the course, good or bad.  Do not be discouraged.  Pulling from years of experience – and trial and error – I am sharing the Meeting to Win  Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter one trouble at a time. 

Solve your sales meeting problems with The Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter.

Problem: 

You, the Sales Manager, start your weekly sales team meeting every Monday morning at 9am and, yet, every week sales team members are joining the call at 9:02, 9:05 even as late as 9:10.  They always have a good excuse, usually something customer-related because who could fault them for that.  Then, you find yourself repeating your greeting and opening remarks over and over as each new person joins the call and finally starting the meeting at 9:15.  Already off schedule and off to an unorganized, awkward start. 

Solution:

• Make sure everyone knows what is expected of them in regards to sales team meeting ettiquette.  A pro-active way to avoid some of these problems in the first place is to set team standards for sales team meetings.  As a team, set ground rules for your weekly sales team meetings.  One of those rules should be that everyone must arrive on time ready to participate in the meeting.  If someone violates the team rule, it is much easier to address it with them and resolve the problem.  (For help setting team ground rules, download the Kick-Off to Great Sales Team Meetings Workshop to use at an upcoming sales team meeting.)
• When someone does join late, do NOT stop and tell them what they have missed so far.  Let them be lost.  It is rude to make the rest of the team hear the same thing twice because one of their team mates is late. 
• For fun, let everyone know that all latecomers will need to sing the National Athem or some other “punishment”.  Make it clear that being late is something to avoid.  You can have some fun with this if it is rare.  If you have a repeat offender, you’ll need to address that more seriously outside the meeting enviroment.
• If you have the type of conference call system that you can “lock” and not allow entry to a call, “lock” your call at the meeting start time and do not let latecomers in.  If you don’t, let everyone know not to bother calling in if they are calling in late.  It’s disruptive.
• As a Sales Manager, show respect for your team’s time by being on time yourself, ending calls on time, using their time wisely and expecting the same level of respect from them. 
• Make it clear that the sales team meeting hour is an important hour that the team should plan their schedule around attending.  Then… make it a valuable hour – everytime.

Stay tuned to the Meeting to Win blog for solutions to all your sales meeting troubles as we continue adding to The Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter.  To get new sales team meeting topics every week, complete with a 60 minute agenda,  join Meeting to Win.  We’d love to work with you and your team!

 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…

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

The Monday Morning Sales Team Meeting is a critically important hour in the week of a salesperson.  The right meetings can motivate and inspire a salesperson for the week ahead.  Unfortunately, there are so many things that can go wrong in this one little hour – .025% of a salesperson’s week can set the course, good or bad.  Do not be discouraged.  Pulling from years of experience – and trial and error – I am sharing the Meeting to Win  Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter one trouble at a time. 

Solve your sales meeting problems with The Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter.

Problem: 

As the Sales Manager, you’ve prepared your agenda, you’ve gotten to your office a few minutes early, you’ve dialed into your weekly sales team meeting call a few minutes early to greet your team and…. you wait.  Like most Sales Managers, you want to make the most of this hour.  You are counting on undivided attention as you work your way through your topics of company news, report requests, performance updates (so you can fill in your report for your boss) and assigning tasks.  So, you greet your team members as they join – they sound a bit overwhelmed and tired from the weekend as you try to fire them up with “good morning”, “how was your weekend?”.  They greet you and then push… mute.  You start your agenda and you hear in support… chirp… chirp…. nothing.  It is silent.  No one laughs at your jokes, agrees or disagrees or even answers questions.  Just …chirp…chirp.

Solution:

There is nothing more awkward than leading a call and not having any idea if the team is supportive or even listening.  Most likely, they are checking their e-mails.  There are ways to make your sales team meetings interactive and interesting. 

Here are a few solutions to this problem:

• First of all, create an agenda that isn’t just about you, the sales manager.  No matter how tempting, the sales meeting is not your opportunity to gather performance updates from each person or gather information for one of your reports.  You need to be doing that in one-on-ones with your salespeople or pulling the information from reports you already gather from the team.  Instead, make the agenda about them and what is helpful to them, NOT you.  This can be done by adding agenda topics relevant to sales issues they face in the field.
• Then, involve your team in leading and managing the sales team meeting.  Assign team members to lead agenda topics, ask someone else to be the timekeeper and keep the team on track, randomly call on people for their opinion on the current topic and involve the team in agenda preparation.
• In addition, send the agenda out in advance and include pre-work.  The pre-work can be reading an article, preparing an idea on an agenda topic or any other quick assignment to get them in the meeting before the meeting.  During your sales team meeting, have a discussion on the pre-work.
• Lastly, as a team review the agenda and set a goal for the meeting.  “At the end of this meeting, we each want to have one new idea for handling an objection we’ve heard recently.”  Then, at the end of the call, ask each team member to share their one new idea to confirm the team met the goal of the meeting.  Time well spent!

Stay tuned to the Meeting to Win blog for solutions to all your sales meeting troubles as we continue adding to The Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter.  To get new sales team meeting topics every week, complete with a 60 minute agenda,  join Meeting to Win.  We’d love to work with you and your team!

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

Sales Team Meeting Troubleshooter – Problem: The Dominator