Do You Have Weekly Sales Meetings?

Over the past three decades I have studied dozens and dozens of SMB companies where the selling was not smooth. Patterns began to emerge as to why sales were not growing as expected. The number four reason on my “Top Twelve Reasons Why Sales are not Growing as Expected” list is:

No weekly scheduled sales meetings.

Sales meetings should be a learning experience designed to share success stories, what’s working and what’s not working, as well as to identify and resolve issues that are getting in the way of making sales. These meetings are the foundation of effective coaching and mentoring. Each member of the sales team should know what is expected of them each week. The sales leader should make sure everyone comes prepared to report on their expected deliverables.

Here is an example agenda for getting the most value out of your team’s sales meetings.

1. Sales Meeting Agenda
   Individual Check-in (5 minutes)
   One good thing that has happened professional and personally during the past week
2. Good News (10 minutes)
   Success Stories / Won Deals
   What’s Working
3. Reporting (5 minutes)
   Sales Scorecard Review
   Resource Check-in
4. To-Dos (5 minutes) … process to-dos from last week; was everything completed
5. Issues (30 minutes) … could involve sales skills, sales process, resource/sales support needs, product training or anything that gets in the way of a sales team achieving its sales objectives. Use the following process:

i. Identify: encourage each team member to share their biggest issue; develop and share a list containing all the issues to process in a meeting in advance of the meeting; if the list is long, you might have everyone vote on their top two issues at the meeting to ensure the biggest issues get processed

ii. Discuss: ask questions around the issue in order to ensure that everyone understands the issue; get to the root cause prior to discussing the issue

iii. Solve: either solve the problem at the meeting or come up with an action plan to solve it

Target only 10 minutes to process any issue. If it takes more than 10 minutes then a separate meeting to solve may be necessary. Establish to-dos for next week.

    6)     Conclude (5 minutes)

a. To Do Recap (for next week)

b. Communication to Company … does anything need to be communicated throughout the company

c. Rate Meeting (1 → 10) … have each person rate the value of the meeting; anyone offering up a score of 8 or less should be prepared to offer suggestions on how to improve the next meeting

Does your sales team meet weekly? What do you find works well for structuring sales meetings?

Pipeliner CRM visually empowers efficient sales meetings. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.