If’ you’ve been following along, we’ve been going in-depth on my 10 Secrets of a Successful Sales Meeting.
So we have arrived at #8: Be Sure to Reach Agreement on 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.
Leading a sales team can at times feel like trying to herd cats. If you want chaos among a sales team, whether it be a strong team or a weak team, all you have to do is not be 100% clear about your expectations are and what needs to be done. Salespeople by nature are individual thinkers, and unless guided, they will very quickly start making changes in things based on how they see things.
Be 100% up front with objectives and be equally clear with the sales team as to what they need to do to achieve the objectives.
This is the number one reason to have a sales meeting. It’s not to update numbers and it’s not to see how people feel. It’s about making sure they leave the meeting with a clear understanding of what they need to do.
Best way to accomplish this is by identifying these items in the meeting agenda and then use the allocated time to review specifically what needs to be done. In an earlier step I talked about how you use time after the meeting for individual follow-up, and this is the precise reason why the individual follow-up occurs after the meeting. Doing so allows you to do another “check off” with each person.
Yes, your people have goals they need to accomplish, but so do you. In order for you to accomplish your goals, you need the collective engagement of each person doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
This one step of being clear about the goals and how they’re going to accomplish them will return a higher return on investment on your meeting time than nearly every other activity.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
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