5 Impactful Things You Should Do at Your Next Sales Meeting
Productivity
Sales meetings can be a valuable tool to move your team forward, but they can also be a waste of time.
How things play out depends largely on whether you enter each meeting with a clear plan of action.
Your reps are busy and you are too, so it’s important that everyone involved feels like they’re getting a valuable return on their investment of time. In other words, you don’t want to call a meeting just for the sake of calling a meeting.
So what makes a good meeting? It starts with a goal, and accountability.
Let’s take a deeper look at five things you can do to make your next sales meeting a success.
1. Prepare Data Ahead of Time
Data is at the heart of every productive meeting.
When you’re planning a meeting, be sure to gather relevant metrics and data in advance. Know what you want to discuss, how the data informs that discussion, and what you’ll want to track after the meeting. The last part is key.
Analyzing the data is the only reliable way to gauge whether your meetings are having an impact. To do so effectively, you need to know in advance which metrics you plan to track after the meeting.
It’s the best way to track performance gains, and identify areas where your reps could still use some improvement. Revisiting data also shows your reps that the time they spent in previous meetings was meaningful, and productive.
2. Set Clear Goals For Each Meeting
What do you want to get out of a given meeting? What do your reps expect to get out of it?
A meeting without a clearly stated goal will quickly become an unfocused waste of time. So you should always plan your meetings with a goal in mind, and be specific.
In other words, simply holding a “quarterly sales meeting” won’t cut it. When your focus is that broad, your reps enter the meeting with no idea what to expect. Narrow your focus. “Quarterly Sales Meeting for Pipeline Review,” for example, is much more specific, and sets clear expectations for everyone involved.
3. Recognize Excellence and Improvement
The broad goal of meetings is almost always to improve performance in some form, so it’s important to recognize when your reps take that goal to heart.
Set aside some time in every meeting to recognize your high performers, but don’t stop there. You also want to take some time to highlight the reps who demonstrate improvement in previously deficient areas.
Recognizing improvement reinforces the importance of meetings, shows you take the data seriously, and provides a nice confidence boost to your reps.
4. Highlight Action Items
A lively discussion is great, and it’s always a positive when your reps leave a meeting feeling better informed.
Ultimately, though, your meetings will only make a real impact if your reps know which actions to take after the meeting has concluded. Each rep should leave a meeting with a clear idea of what they need to accomplish, and how they can accomplish it.
This is another area where data plays a major role. When your reps leave a meeting with an idea of which metrics you’re focusing on and what you plan to track for the next meeting, they know the areas in which they need to take action.
The substance of the meeting itself should go a long way toward showing your reps how to take action in the highlighted areas.
5. Make Everyone Accountable
Every successful meeting depends on accountability.
The leader of the meeting needs to show up with clear goals, a plan, and the data to back it up. Your reps need to bring any data for which they are responsible, be prepared to answer questions, and be open-minded to suggestions.
Basically, everyone involved needs to enter a meeting ready to make the most of the time available.
What happens after the meeting is just as important. Sales reps should leave a meeting with an understanding of what they need to do, and how to make performance gains before the next meeting.
If you want your team to thrive, there’s no substitute for accountability and competition.
In the end, holding an high-impact meeting requires everyone involved to play their part, with clear expectations. Accountability, data, and preparedness are at the heart of it all. Your meetings can be a launching pad for performance gains, but you need everyone to be on the same page if you’re going to meet your goals.
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