Motivation is the guiding force of human behaviors. It helps improve people's efficiency as they work towards achieving goals. When a team lacks motivation, it might have a negative impact on sales figures, and the overall performance of your business.
All companies conduct regular sales meetings to discuss objectives, sum up various projects, and share ideas. However, not all meetings are productive since at times managers do not know how to properly organize them. Studies show that many employees find these meetings to be a waste of time. If they are properly planned and controlled, they can bring benefits such as team motivation, fast conflict resolution, better decision making, etc.
Tips for Creating a Successful Sales Meeting
In any business sphere, preparation is essential for success. Here are some basic steps to conducting efficient meetings:
- Provide a clear goal. Having a specific meeting objective can help you stay focused. Discussing multiple topics might be overwhelming for each team member. So think about one clear objective for your upcoming meeting to make it more efficient. Less important goals may be discussed at another time.
- Create a well-thought-out agenda. A good agenda should include a minute-to-minute schedule of what you need to cover.
- Assign a leader. There should be someone responsible for keeping things on track during a meeting. It can be done by a manager, but they may also designate some other person for this role in advance.
- Keep it short. It is important to determine the approximate amount of time required to discuss a certain goal. It will likely help motivate everyone to achieve the defined objective faster and prevent your meeting from being dragged out.
Elements of a Successful Sales Meeting
Sales meetings should be well-executed and full of highly relevant information. The following elements of a successful discussion can be outlined:
- Welcome and introductions. The aim of this part is to make sure that each member feels comfortable. If you have a new employee in your team, you may ask them several ice-breaker questions. They do not have to be related to work. For instance, "What do you like most about the place where you live?" What is your favorite movie?" Such questions may be quite simple and tend to reveal some personal information.
- You may present objective sales numbers that reflect the performance of your business at the current stage. It can help encourage your team to be more active and focused on work in both the days and weeks ahead.
- Remember about your remote employees. It can be challenging for remote workers to be concentrated during a meeting. So if you have such employees, make sure you provide high-quality equipment and that everyone speaks loudly and distinctly. Also, ensure each participant gets the opportunity to express their opinion.
- A motivational part. It is about boosting your team's confidence and motivation. They should feel energized and encouraged to get back to work. You can use positive phrases, inspirational quotes, motivational video clips, etc.
31 Sales Meeting Ideas
- Education is the key to future success. The best salespeople train and learn every day. You may provide some educational materials, client feedback, discuss a useful blog post or arrange a short training session. This way your employees can receive valuable information or gain a new skill.
- Create an encouraging atmosphere. Sales leaders are not the only ones who can motivate their team. Each member can take part in creating an encouraging atmosphere. Ask them to share their stories about how others in the team helped them in the past month. Encourage them to praise each other for that. If they struggle to find the right words, you may suggest such phrases as, "Your fantastic work has really helped our team" "I admire the way you handle problems" "Your dedication to your work is inspiring", etc. Your team will likely get used to sharing positivity and it being incorporated into your company's culture.
- Recognize value. There are always some achievements to celebrate, even if they are small. Make sure to recognize your team's good work. For example, it can be a new employee's first successful deal. Save the discussion of negative results for one-on-one sales meetings. Otherwise, it may be embarrassing for those people whose work is being discussed and demotivational for others.
- Share experiences. Encourage the best performers of the month to share how they managed to close many deals, which sales methods they used, etc. It can provide others with some helpful information.
- Provide company information. You may share some information regarding what is happening elsewhere in your organization. Talk about the projects and progress of other departments, planned mergers, new shareholders, etc.
- Discuss new products. When your company releases a new product or service, make sure your team members know their features and benefits well. Let them test the products out and provide demos. This way they will be more confident when offering these products to customers.
- Invite people from other departments. Inviting colleagues from other departments can be beneficial to all participants. For example, sales and marketing teams may exchange ideas and experience and create more efficient strategies regarding the company's services.
- Determine their differentiating factors. Ask your team members to outline what makes your company's products different from the others on the market. And what about their personality? Help them determine which traits make them unique and why they can be a good salesperson.
- Setting career goals. Your employees should have an idea of what their career aspirations are. Help them build this clarity. If someone wishes to be a sales manager in the future, tell them what steps they need to take to get there. Do not push anyone into sharing their dreams, if they are not comfortable with that. You can try to discuss their aspirations during one-on-one meetings. Also, you can ask each person to write their goals on a card and then collect the cards. After some time, send each of the participants their cards by mail. This will remind them of their goals.
- Include group personality tests. Have each participant take a personality test and discuss the results. It can help show what a team's collective strengths are. These kinds of tests reveal communication preferences, weaknesses, and increase empathy for one another.
- Discuss roadblocks. Discuss current and potential roadblocks to the sales process. Ask each member to come up with various solutions on how to overcome these obstacles.
- Brainstorm common objections. Your employees likely have to deal with similar customer objections. Brainstorm different ways to overcome them or find out if there is something wrong with the product that needs to be fixed.
- Invite experts. To make your sales meetings more interesting, you may invite experts to share their experience and give advice to your team members. If it is someone they admire, it will be exciting.
- Try a different environment. Routines might lead to inflexible thinking and problem- solving. A change of scenery is a great sales meeting idea that can help spark participants' interest and encourage creative thinking. For instance, conduct a meeting at a park or coffee house. The new environment may be less stressful for your employees. When people are relaxed, they tend to think more clearly and creatively.
- Create a culture of healthy competition. Promote a sense of healthy competition in your team by rewarding their efforts. Who has made the most calls or shown the best results overall? For example, you can reward them with gift certificates to various entertaining places.
- Include team-building activities. Do team-building exercises every now and then. Ask each member to share some of their interests, hobbies, etc. It will help get to know each other better and create a friendly atmosphere where people can relax and talk about things they are interested in.
- Create a skills checklist. Define a range of skills that each employee should acquire to achieve success. Check them during your sales meetings, so they know what needs improvement.
- Conduct polls. You can conduct polls at the end of each meeting. You may ask your team which topics they would like to cover next time.
- Encourage reporting. Ask each employee to describe their responsibilities during the last week. This information may include successes and difficulties, and what they expect from the next week.
- Spotlight. Ask one of your employees to share something that impressed them during their workweek. It can be related to any aspect of their life. They may also share some insights on how to overcome a challenging situation in the workplace.
- Conduct a project-type meeting. You can divide your team into several groups and assign a task to each group. For example, have them do in-depth research on clients and competitors or create a marketing campaign for a certain product. Discuss the results. It can provide some useful information you will likely not learn during a standard sales meeting.
- Analyze various deals. Choose one deal that was successfully closed and one that stalled or failed. Ask participants to determine which factors led to success and failure. It allows them to learn efficient practices in context and help each other break through various obstacles when trying to move deals forward.
- Include timed sales pitches. A good sales representative should know how to get their message across clearly and concisely. Divide your team into groups and give each group 50 seconds to describe the nature and benefits of your company. Discuss the results and choose the best pitch that everyone can use in their work.
- Share sales tools. You can share your favorite sales tools, explain their benefits, and provide a brief tutorial on how to properly use them.
- Conduct a mock presentation. Think about different scenarios for a mock presentation and select a product your team will need to present. At the sales meeting, you will need to assign roles. For example, one participant will play a salesperson, another will be a customer. Play out a scenario. It is better to come up with more tricky situations. It can help strengthen various sales skills.
- Provide ideal client avatars. To sell effectively, there should be an understanding of your company's ideal customers. You may provide different types of client avatars and help your team clarify how to find them. It is an effective sales meeting idea that lets your employees not waste time targeting the wrong people and using the wrong messaging.
- Play games. Introducing gamification into your sales meetings can shake things up. You can use board games or have a quiz on a new product's characteristics and features. These types of activities help establish stronger relationships.
- Send notes. Take notes during your discussion. You may do it using a laptop and then send the document out to other participants right after your sales meeting. It will help them stay on track.
- Surprise your employees. You can conduct a meeting at the end of your workday and surprise your team with some non-work-related activity. For example, it can be food and drinks or a quick meditation. Today, there are lots of apps that provide guided meditations to help re-energize and clear the mind. Give full rein to your imagination.
- Provide visuals. Provide visuals such as videos, infographics, slideshows, and handouts. The human brain tends to process this information faster. Visuals also stimulate emotional responses, which helps memorize things better. For instance, a bar graph that shows sales figures.
- Use a group chat for remote teams. If you have a remote team, you can use instant messaging during your sales meetings. Create group chats to share information. This way of communication is faster and helps ensure everyone receives the needed data.
Final thoughts
Motivating your employees is not an easy task. So applying sales meeting ideas may help spice your meetings up. Having a dedicated and motivated team surely leads to stronger relationships, trust, increased sales, and the overall prosperity of your company.
