10 Steps For Running Results-Oriented Sales Meetings

The sales meeting is an effective way to build a culture of accountability.

It helps individual producers, and the business as a whole, to stay on track to achieve growth goals.

Unfortunately, sales meetings can also be a source of frustration for leaders, who often allow meetings to run them and to weigh everyone else down in the process.

What makes an effective sales meeting?

A sales meeting should be results-oriented, and sharply focused on new business development and pipeline management, to convert suspects into prospects and prospects into clients.

Results-oriented sales meetings identify business development opportunities that require immediate priority action and involve detailed discussions on the critical stages that need to be taken, as well as who should take them, and when.

During every meeting, ask the following three questions:

Are we on track with our individual and group sales plans and goals?

Are our strategies developing the right behaviours and habits?

Have we clearly defined our pipeline and the actions we need to take to move prospective clients to the next stage and eventually convert them into clients?

10 steps for running results-oriented sales meetings

To make sure your sales meetings are effective and focused, follow these steps:

1. Designate a specific week, day, time and duration for your business development meeting. It can be held weekly, fortnightly, or monthly – just make sure it’s scheduled and added to everyone’s calendar

2. Designate a chairperson for the meeting. This need not always be the sales leader; the role can be rotated between producers. The chairperson’s responsibility is to ensure the meeting has a results focus rather than a task focus; this can be achieved by setting an appropriate meeting    agenda

3. Nominate a scribe to record action commitments and other meeting notes

4. Start the meeting by asking producers to provide an update on their previous action commitments

5. Require all producers to submit a weekly update of their top 10 highest priority business development opportunities in the sales pipeline. They should do this prior to the meeting.

6. Ask producers to provide, for discussion, a complete profile of their top two opportunities and the stage they have reached in the sales process. This should be done during the meeting

7. For each account presented, colleagues can offer the producer suggestions, advice and help, to clarify the next action to move the opportunity forward

8. The chairperson should ask for next action commitments from every producer in the meeting

9. If producers feel uncertain or sense their action commitment target dates might not be achieved, they should speak up. In that case, contingency plans can be established and/or help from the leadership team provided

10. The chairperson should provide a summary of the meeting and the date of the next meeting.

Sales meetings do not have to be long. A successful results-oriented meeting can be achieved in as little as 30 minutes.

Holding regular sales meetings will ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. Key accounts are not won overnight, but through a series of steps and discussions.

Top performers run effective sales meetings in order to equip their professionals for success and to make sure everyone is going in the same direction.

Meetings are not ends in themselves, but the instruments used to fuel growth.