Do your sales meetings feel unproductive or routine? Worse yet, do your people feel like it is more productive for them to be in the field instead of in your sales meeting? Salespeople have developed beliefs over the years (and most of them are unfortunately true) that a traditional sales meeting can be a total waste of time. Here are the top 5 common time-wasting traps sales management falls into when conducting meetings.
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No agenda for the meeting: People pay more attention when they know they have to make a decision in the end. If reps do not have clarity to why they are going or what they need to prepare for, the number of emails sent from their phones during your meeting skyrockets.
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Failure to engage: Most groups have “vacationers” (reps who attend meetings because it is better than prospecting) and “hostages” (reps who attend only because they are being forced to do so). With these groups managers often fail to provide pre-work for the meetings or involve them in the meeting to increase engagement.
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Not turning company updates into sales language: Product and service updates are important, but to ensure relevancy to your reps, how does it help them produce more? Managers often fail to correlate product updates to additional questions their reps can ask to further differentiate themselves from the competition.
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Not setting clear next steps: Once the meeting is wrapping up, managers often fail to help the reps discover exactly what they are to do next, why they should do it, and how to go about it. If any of these three components are missing (what, why, or how), clarity will be lacking and confusion will follow.
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Lack of accountability: If reps have caught on to your pattern of giving direction but failing to ensure the strategy/tactic is completed, it will create a feeling of “this too shall pass.” Accountability ensures productivity.
Sales meetings are productive when managed correctly. It does not have to do with the length of time spent on the sales meeting, it is more about what happens with the time in front of the group. The main goal of the meeting should be for your people to leave thinking that they have a lot of work to do coming directly from that meeting. If this happens, you will find defense walls regarding your meetings will decrease and sales start to increase.
