Are your sales team meetings painful? Do you feel this pressure to entertain and energize your sales team every Monday morning only to leave feeling disappointed and awkward? You are not alone…

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Sales team meetings call into play skill sets and abilities such as facilitation, showmanship, conflict resolution, public speaking, communication skills and likability. There are people who make a living specializing in just one of those skill sets. So, it’s no wonder it’s challenging to execute productive and inspiring sales team meetings week after week.

I have the solution for you.

Quit trying to do it yourself.

Sales team members didn’t buy a ticket to your show. Therefore, they need to stop showing up on Monday mornings with the attitude of an audience waiting to get their money’s worth.

The sales team meeting is for the benefit of the sales team, not the sales manager. It is time to invite your team to participate in this aspect of their success. By the time they arrive at the Monday morning sales team meeting they should already know the topics and be prepared to contribute to a productive discussion with a clearly defined goal for the time they are spending in the meeting.

To achieve this, begin by holding your last performance meeting about the future of your team’s Monday morning sales team meetings. Let the team know that collectively the group has much more to contribute that just you alone. With that reality, it is time to share ownership of the weekly sales team meetings.

Some things you can do during this meeting to improve all future meetings include:

• Ask the team for their ideas to improve sales team meetings.
• Ask the team to share what they believe to be the value of a well-executed weekly sales team meeting.
• Set up a schedule for each team member to own sales team meetings – find topics and exercises, create and send agenda, meet goals.
• As a team, create a list of useful topics.
• As a team, set rules of engagment for sales team meetings.

Expecting your team to take ownership in the weekly sales team meeting accomplishes several things. 

First, they will be more engaged and make better use of that hour.

Second, they get the chance to develop leadership skills.

Third, they get the chance to improve meeting management skills which will be evident in future meetings with customers.

Enjoy better meetings in 2011.  If you would like a sales team meeting template to help you faciliate this meeting we described above, simply visit our Store to Purchase and Download the Topic-to-Win Sales Team Meeting Success.