10 Secrets to a Successful Sales Meeting

10 Secrets to a Successful Sales Meeting:from Sales Motivation and Sales Training by TheSalesHunter
A successful sales meeting is possible, and these 10 secrets will help:
1. Spend time focused on one hot issue. Don’t try to cover every single issue. If you try to cover everything, you really won’t be digging into the important issues to the degree that you need to.
2. Recognize performance. Salespeople love recognition. Have a process in place that people can look forward to as being their time to shine.
3. Announce the agenda and topics to be covered ahead of time.  Make people come prepared and hold them accountable.
4. Start on-time. End on-time. Salespeople are expected to respect their customer’s time, right? You should do the same with your sales staff.
5. Follow-up on individual items after the meeting, not during the meeting. Don’t waste everyone’s time at a meeting by spending time dealing with one person.
6. Allow for discussion and input. A sales presentation without input from the customer isn’t much of a sales call.   Same goes for a sales meeting. Allow people an opportunity to discuss.
7. Keep to a minimum the time allocated to supply-chain issues, volume updates, etc. Meetings that are nothing more than updates will be seen by salespeople as a waste of their time.
8. Reach agreement on specific next steps.  Don’t leave things hanging.  We ask salespeople to be accurate with how they close a sale to ensure the customer knows what they will and will not be receiving. The same thing goes for how we run a sales meeting.
9. Allocate time at each meeting for a “personal growth/training” activity.  Use the time together as an opportunity to help people improve their selling skills.
10. Make it a goal of the meeting to motivate the team and build culture.  For most salespeople, the sales meeting is their biggest interaction with you and the company as a whole.  Make sure they leave with a positive state of mind.
In the upcoming days, I will expand on each of these 10 items.  The items listed are based on my experience both as a sales manager leading sales teams as well as an attendee to hundreds of sales meetings over the years.
The difference between a high-performing team and a low-performing sales team comes down to a number of factors; however, one thing remains constant — the quality of their sales meetings.  High-performing sales teams have sales meetings that are definitely more than a rambling delivery of numbers.
Along with expanding on this list of 10 items to run a successful sales meeting, I’ll also share another list of items I refer to as the key traits of a successful sales manager.
High-performance sales teams do not get that way simply because of superstar salespeople, superior products or an outstanding sales proposition in a market where the competition is asleep.
Sure, each of these things can help contribute, but at the base of any high-performing sales team is high-performing sales leadership.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.