Sales and Sales Management Blog

How to Create a Productive Sales Team Meeting Environment
By Jill Myrick

Sales Managers, picture this.  You are holding your Monday morning sales team meeting.  You’ve signed on to the conference line 3 minutes before the meeting is set to start and your entire team is already there greeting one another, discussing their weekend and laughing.  You join to the “hellos” and “how was your weekend?” from everyone.  You join the conversation and at exactly the start time, you let the team know it’s time to start the meeting.  You thank them all for their time and review the agenda they’ve each already received.  The agenda topics are all sales focused and you and your team know that at the end of this hour everyone will be more equipped to compete and win this very week.  You begin the meeting.  You lead some topics, team members have come prepared to lead other topics and each topic comes with lively, positive discussion, problem solving and sharing.  At the end, everyone agrees this hour was time well spent and they leave the call with new ideas and energy for the week. 

Did I just describe your sales team meetings?  If not, no need to worry – this can be your story in just a matter of weeks. 

Today, we are going to share 15 best practices for creating productive sales team meeting environments like the one pictured above.  Sales teams can contribute, learn and even have some fun – all this while becoming better equipped to compete and win every day.   Check out the list and use the ideas and best practices.  You’ll be amazed at how fun, interactive and productive sales team meetings can be.

1. Have a “Kick-Off Meeting” to introduce your commitment to a new and improved sales team meeting format.  Signal to the team that unproductive, boring, motivation-robbing sales team meetings are history.
2. As a team, set the ground rules for your sales team meetings.  Examples include, everyone should be on time, complaints must also come with solution ideas, stick to the agenda, etc.  It is important that the team, not the sales manager alone, set the ground rules.
3. Have some fun by asking the team to describe the best and worst sales team meetings they’ve attended – or endured.
4. Create some healthy conflict or debate. Introduce a topic on which the team is bound to have differing opinions such as the way to address a common objection, negotiation tactics on a live deal or the best way to break into a new client.  Differing opinions and debate open up the team’s creativity and stretch old habits – and keep your meeting interesting.
5. Ask the team to plan around the weekly sales team meeting as if it were a customer meeting.  Once they see these meetings are adding value, they won’t want to miss them anyway.
6. Start on time, end on time, and expect everyone to be on time.
7. To encourage the team to interact and collaborate, Sales Managers should resist the urge to answer all the questions. If a question is raised, sales managers should say something like “I am happy to share my thoughts. First I’d like to hear what Sally and Joe think. Sally?”  Great ideas exist on the sales team and sales managers should facilitate meetings to encourage the team to share. 
8. Ask each team member to “own” sales team meeting success.  It is the entire team’s responsibility to use this time wisely. Each week someone can be a timekeeper, someone a scribe, someone leads a topic, someone shares an article for discussion, someone shares a best practice and many other roles.  The Sales Manager should be the facilitator and expect the team to play important meeting leadership roles.
9. Have an agenda and then send it to the team at least 3 business days in advance of each meeting. 
10. Fill your agenda with relevant sales topics, discussions and exercises.  Ask the team to contribute ideas and, to say it again, lead topics, also.
11. Invite interesting guest speakers – your CFO to build your team’s financial acumen, your Marketing officer to share industry trends or a top performer from another team to share their secrets.
12. Pre-Work should be assigned occasionally.  It could be a simple as “please come prepared with some ideas for overcoming the following objection, _____________________” or “please read the article, _________________, and be prepared to discuss.”
13. Have an objective for each agenda topic.  For example, “At the end of this meeting I want my team to have more ideas on effective prospecting in this changing economy.” Then make sure the agenda accomplishes this.
14. Stick to a 60 minute agenda and commit to using only 10 minutes or less per meeting on housekeeping items.
15. Put appropriate effort and resource into planning and leading great sales team meetings.  This can be an incredibly powerful hour each week if planned and executed effectively.  If not, it can be an incredibly expensive hour.

Enjoy productive sales team meetings beginning this week.

Jill Myrick is the Founder and Owner of Meeting to Win, LLC.  Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting topics and agendas for sales managers who want to equip their teams to compete and win every week. Jill has attended hundreds of sales team meetings, interviewed successful sales managers on the topic and led over 1,600 sales team meetings (that’s the equivalent of 28 years of weekly sales team meetings!) in industries such as printing & shipping, staffing, commercial real estate and, sales and leadership training. To learn more about Meeting to Win, visit www.meetingtowin.com.