I’ve been giving you the secrets you need to know to have a successful sales meeting, and now we’ve arrived at Secret #5:
Follow up on individual items after the meeting, not during the meeting.
Don’t waste everyone’s time at a meeting by spending time dealing with one person.
Ask any of the members of your sales team what bugs them, and one of the items on the list will surely be having to attend a meeting where far too much time is spent going over individual items, one person at a time, all for the sake of keeping the sales manager happy.
Let’s see time for what it is – valuable.
Use it as the business tool it truly is.
Asking a person for a quick update is one thing, but going around the room asking everyone to give their updates on things can quickly turn into a real drag for everyone involved. Yes, you do want to hold people accountable, but there are other ways to do it.
One way is to have them send to you as part of their pre-meeting preparation their updated numbers, which you can then publish to everyone. Let them read the numbers in the meeting rather than spending time announcing them.
By having people submit to you in advance the update you want, it will also allow you to be more prepared for any issues that you can address after the meeting.
By following up with people one-on-one after the meeting regarding specific issues, you will dramatically improve the level of accountability on the part of the sales team.
Following up one-on-one will give you the time you need to discuss with more depth a specific issue that needs to be handled.
All it takes is for your sales team to realize you’re following up with them immediately following the meeting and you’ll be amazed at how much more prepared they are.
It will only take a single “get serious” individual meeting for people to realize how they need to not only be prepared, but also step up their performance – or they will be having another “get serious” meeting with the boss.
This approach provides you as the sales manager with an effective and timely approach to follow up on what you expect. By doing it immediately following the meeting, you will set in place a standard procedure with which to lead your organization.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
