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Posts Tagged ‘energize sales team’

Outpace the Competition By Starting the Next Selling Season NOW

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Summer is coming to a close, many kids are back in school and, if you follow business activity trends, you’ll notice that things are picking up heading into the next selling season.  Right now in early August is the time to increase your sales activity so you can gain more market share as more and more purchases are made post-summer. 

Get your team together early this month and pick a handful of activities that you need to be doing to win business during the next selling season, Sept- Nov.  Set increased activity goals in those areas for the month of August. Watch Sept-Nov sales grow because your team is increasing activity in August instead of extending your summer by an extra month like your competitors are doing.

For an agenda to lead your team through an exercise to celebrate and learn from your summer’s success while planning for success in the next selling season, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas. 

Join us for a great Fall Selling Season.

The Secrets of the Bottom 80%

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

The pre-work for this week’s Meeting to Win sales team meeting agenda includes two articles by S. Anthony Iannarino of The Sales Blog.

Mr. Iannarino writes an insightful blog and was kind enough to let us use his insights into the bottom 80% of sales performers.  Read the articles, add to the list and decide where you want to rank. 

To get a sales team meeting agenda that leads your team through this valuable exercise, subscribe before Friday!  The agenda goes out at 6am ET.  Hope you can join us in the TOP 20%.

Meetings That Rock by Paul Castain, Pt 2

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

 paul_castain

Here is a link to the FREE e-book Paul promised and delivered.  Enjoy!  Thanks to Paul for mentioning Meeting to Win as a helpful resource for sales managers looking to have “meetings that rock“.

Sales Meetings that Rock by Paul Castain of Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

It’s one of my goals to share great sales meeting ideas and resources with Sales & The City readers. In pursuit of that goal, I point you to Paul Castain’s two-part series, Sales Meetings That Rock.

Check it out here.

Summer Momentum Project

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

We here in the northern hemisphere are experiencing the dog days of summer.  If you haven’t taken a vacation yet this summer, shame on you.  Immediately stop reading this and find a beach house - minimum stay 7 nights.  If you are back from vacation, then continue reading.  It really doesn’t take a lot of extra effort to gain the competitive edge.  It simply takes a few strategic moves to create momentum that will reward you when others are just getting back in the game.  Now, mid-July, is the time to take action.  You have a good 6-8 weeks to get a headstart that you will not regret.

Check out the Meeting to Win ideas for heading into the next selling season with a head of steam:

Click on this link to get a list of ideas:  Getting a Headstart

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

  • Ask everyone to read this blog post before your next sales meeting.
  • Ask everyone to come with their own ideas to add to the list.  During the meeting, create a comprehensive list of ideas.
  • During the meeting, ask each person to commit to 1 or more activities that will make the biggest difference in their momentum.
  • Ask someone to “own” the Summer Momentum Project (leadership opportunity).  It will be their job to monitor and report on the team’s progress until the end of August. 
  • Then, once a month,  Sept – Dec, ask the team to share the results of the SMP.  I guarantee you will have RESULTS!

To get sales team meeting agendas that lead your team through exercises to gain momentum, close more pipeline opportunities and stay motivated during the dog – and any other – days, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas. 

Look forward to Monday mornings!

10,000 Hours

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

I am finally reading Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.   I’ve only been carrying it around for 2 years and, yesterday, on a flight read the first half.  The concept of 10,000 hours is one of the many pages I’ve dog eared.  This is the concept with supporting examples that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert and a stand-out.  I’ve always been a believer that experience counts in sales.  Think about how much time you actually spend in front of a customer practicing your trade – 10 hours/week if you’re lucky?  How long would it take to gain 10,000 hours of practice?  19 years?  25 years? 

YIKES! 

So, if you want to be an expert, you have to find more practice time.  Here are some ideas:

  • First of all, use your weekly sales meeting as a one-hour practice session. – 1 hour/week (Who saw that coming?)
  • Role play your upcoming customer encounters with a team member or manager before the customer encounter. -  2 hours per week
  • Spend time pre-call planning – opening statements, questions, objection responses, etc – 2 hours per week
  • Take one sales training class per year. – 16 hours per year
  • Spend 2 more hours per week with customers than you do now.  – 2 hours per week
  • Regularly attend a customer meeting with a peer to observe them.  – 2 hours per month

So, adding all of this to your current 10 customer hours per week, you’ll be at 18 hours per week which would put you at expert status in half the time as your peers.  My math shows 10 years (which is how long it seems to take in any field – music, technology, sports). 

I love this concept because it means you have control over how you stack up against your peers in the marketplace.  Invest time in your trade and it pays off. 

Sales Team Meeting Idea

  • As a team, ask each person to calculate their own individual sales practice hours.  Just use number of years of experience, add in training hours and ask each team member to come up with their number.
  • Now, as a team, figure out how to get an additional 5-10 hours per week of sales practice. 
  • Commit to getting more practice and then track your performance against other sales teams in your own company.  What results do you expect?

Enjoy working on your 10,000 hours.

Get In Each Other’s Business This Summer

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Meeting to Win subscribers have just begun the Summer Deal Makers Series. (Join us by subscribing and get a new agenda every week.)  We thought we’d share the idea with our blog readers, also.  As we’ve mentioned about once a week leading up to the summer, we all know that it can be more difficult to move deals forward in the summer months.  Decision makers are on vacation and, therefore, sales process steps take longer to complete.  Before you know it, sales cycles have doubled and sales reps don’t have much more than a tan and some frustration to show for the summer. 

There is an alternative, though.  As a team, choose two deals per rep and get in each other’s business.  Each deal owner should share their summer strategy on those deals with the team. The team should provide input and ideas to keep the deal moving and, hopefully, closing during the summer.  Each week, each rep should share what was accomplished on those 2 deals the previous week, the planned accomplishments for the upcoming week and, again, get input from the team. This can be done in rapid-fire format.  Do it every week on the same deals.  Stay focused and close those deals this summer.

The benefits of this are increased summer momentum, accountability to keep things moving in the summer and laser focus on sales and customers.  The side benefits include increased morale, better team work and sales lessons galore. 

To get structured sales team meeting agendas on this topic and many others, join as a subscriber and get in on the Summer of Momentum from Meeting to Win. We don’t want you to miss a minute of the fun.  Join us or create your own fun.  Best wishes for a great summer!

13 Ideas to Run Engaging Meetings from Salesopedia Written by Nicki Weiss

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

I always love to share great meeting advice I come across in my reading. Here is some sound advice from Salesopedia’s newsletter this week.

13 Ideas to Run Engaging Meetings

Enjoy!

Sales Team Meeting Idea – Sales Performance Book Club

Saturday, May 1st, 2010

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 WinMeeting to Win provides Sales Team Meeting Agendas PLUS for Sales Managers who want to lead great sales team meetings.