To some people, a weekly sales meeting is pure drudgery, while to others, it's a welcome opportunity to either share success with others or find ways to improve personal performance. The difference is a function of how well the meeting is planned.A good sales meeting can be a powerful sales tool and can provide valuable training and information that help everyone perform better. Here are ways to structure sales meetings so that they are valuable adjuncts to your staff's sales routine.
Instructions
1. Start and end your sales meeting at the same time and day every week. Do so and it will soon become part of your staff's routine; if each meeting is planned properly, every attendee will look forward to it each week. (By the way, it is best to plan your sales meetings early in the week.)
2. Don't make individual failures public. Too often, sales people are compared to each other, while others in the company avoid such scrutiny.If a person is underperforming, tell him so in private, not in front of the entire group.
3. Review the latest decisions your advertising department has made, to demonstrate to your salespeople that the company is doing its part to help them. If this is done properly, it will help make each salesperson more enthusiastic about working for the company.
4. Make part of each meeting a tutorial. Pick a product and enumerate those benefits that your sales staff should be highlighting each time the product is presented. This would also be the appropriate time to mention new features and benefits if the product has been improved. Consider role-playing as a part of this portion of the meeting.
5. Enlist the help of your sales force to design sales contests. There is no better way to encourage enthusiasm than to have them take part in development of the program.
6. Customer feedback should definitely become a part of every sales meeting. This will provide “on the ground” reaction to the way your people are presenting your product or service; from it, appropriate changes should be made.
7. At the end of each meeting, ask people at random what they got out of today's session. It will be obvious from the answers you receive that some people paid attention, while others did not.
