We all have sat through good and bad sales meetings, and it’s time to get serious about what I see happening far too often.
The problem is the weekly sales meeting the manager has with their sales team.
You know what I’m talking about.
You probably are either in one on a regular basis or maybe you’re the one responsible for organizing it.
Here’s my issue: Too many times the weekly sales meeting does zero for the sales team. That’s right! ZERO!
Yes, there are too many weekly sales meetings that are nothing more than a way for a sales manager to check something off their task list. If this is the motivation behind the meeting, I’d bet my last dollar that the meeting is NOT helpful to the people in it.
I was eavesdropping on a weekly sales meeting recently and the first thing the manager talked about was everyone’s PTO (Paid Time Off) and if there were any updates to it.
Give me a break! What a big fat waste of time!
This is not a detail that should be covered in a meeting. Not only did the manager start the meeting with this, he actually spent 1/3 of the meeting on similar type tasks and making various announcements.
That. Is. Lame.
The attendees, as you can imagine, are all sitting there thinking what a waste of time this is and how their manager is stupid for wasting their time.
Administrative details like this should not even be on the agenda of a sales meeting. When I hear things like this, I can’t help but think to myself how the leader is anything but a leader. At best they’re a lousy manager.
A weekly sales meeting should actually benefit the people in it. It should be about making things happen, discussing key issues, and deciding how the team is going to respond to challenges and boost profits.
The last thing a sales meeting should consist of is updating status reports, etc. Things like this should be done via email. Think for a moment about the cost of having everyone sit in a meeting while you go around the room updating a report.
I could go on and on, but the key reason for a sales meeting of any type is to benefit the sales team, not the sales manager.
I’ve got a free ebook on how to run a great sales meeting. You can get it by clicking on the below image:
Copyright 2014, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price.