Sales meetings, a torturous occasion sales reps have to endure at least once a week. With the long discussions and routine checklists, sales reps pay little-to-no attention to the conversation at hand.
Sure the meetings are necessary and it’s always a good feeling to get recognized for your hard work after snagging a huge sale. However, taking an entire hour out of the workday to go over numbers that could just as easily fit into an email seems unnecessary. You would much rather spend your time securing leads and building relationships with clients.
Unfortunately, most sales meetings drudge on and on with no light at the end of the tunnel. This makes sales reps less motivated to work, which hinders their sales process.
In a recent study conducted by Atlassian, they agreed sales meetings often waste time:
A shocking 91 percent of employees daydream during meetings, while 39 percent completely fall asleep. Because they feel the meeting is pointless, 73 percent of sales reps do other work while sitting there.
Good news! Sales meetings don’t have to be boring! Turn them into the highlight of the week with these 5 simple steps:
1) Improve Sales Performance with Acting
Role-playing sales scenarios can be scary, especially if you’re being stared down by management. But, by surrendering yourself to the game of role play, you are allowing your sales meeting to be more exciting and constructive. To avoid being blindsided, ensure that management has informed everyone beforehand about this little exercise.
Practice your sales pitch on your boss or pretend to break-up with a client with your favorite co-worker. Keep the energy fun and lighthearted. The goal is to improve your overall sales performance, while correspondingly amp up your flaccid sales meeting.
Keep this exercise short and sweet by making it no more than 15 minutes long. Then co-workers can share feedback that’s constructive for everyone. If necessary, management can pull a sales rep to the side and give them one-on-one feedback.
DO: Inform your sales team whenever role-playing will happen during a meeting. Give them characters and common situations before the meeting starts.
DON’T: Hand a sales rep a random object in the middle of a meeting and ask them to sell it to you. This catches sales reps off guard and makes them confused and uncomfortable with what’s happening.
2) Liven Things Up with Guest Speakers
Bringing in new friendly faces will without a doubt heighten sales reps’ interest in attending sales meetings. Not only will guest speakers draw attention, they’ll also provide awareness on industry trends and pain points not normally touched on.
DO: Bring in people who will provide relevant information on the specific industry your sales reps work with. They’ll share exactly what their industry is searching for in a sales team.
DON’T: Bring in multiple people at once who all work for different industries. You’ll have more than enough sales meeting opportunities to only need one guest speaker at a time. Otherwise, your sales reps will be overwhelmed with vital information that they could easily forget a few hours after the meeting.
3) Go Over Your Success Stories
Have a story bank that holds a multitude of sales wins that everyone on the sales team can use. With these stories, you’ll have an easier time closing a sale because the client is hearing firsthand how well you do your job.
A study from OneSpot shares the importance of storytelling when conducting a sales pitch:
Sharing information through storytelling with a prospect is 22 times more memorable than relaying basic facts. By communicating exactly what your team can offer, leads become easier to convert.
DO: Mentally and physically store success stories to easily pull them out at a moments notice. These stories will show your team off and prove you work hard even when tasks become challenging.
DON’T: Try to share a story with a potential client if you can’t remember everything about it. This is where rehearsing with your team comes into play. If your co-worker is mentioning the same story you are to a prospect and they fumble on the facts, you could very easily lose that lead because of inconsistencies. The last thing you want is to be a sales team known for forgetting their successes.
Lastly, when your sales team meets to rehearse the success stories, discover and solidify which stories won the most sales. This way, you’ll be able to focus on why those stories worked well and how you can fix the other stories to make them more effective. At the end of these meetings, your team should be storytelling experts.
4) Train with Your Team
Sales training can be a drag, so make it more fun by incorporating it into a few of your sales meetings by training with your team. Focus on areas most of the sales reps are struggling so you can help build each other into the best salesmen and women.
DO: Keep training interesting by focusing on different aspects of the sales process. Ask your team: What is the proper length of a sales email? Do our subject lines have consistently positive feedback? How is our client communication? Are we following our best practices? Mini-training sessions during certain sales meetings will help answer these questions and keep your sales team on the right track.
DON’T: Focus all your training on one specific section of the sales process. This will make the training feel redundant and the sales reps will become less invested in getting the necessary training their team needs.
By training your sales team together, you are building a consistent brand within your sales reps, which keeps clients interested in you and your company.
5) Discuss Current Events
It’s great if you can talk endlessly about various products and services. But sometimes to really build a connection with someone, you have to talk about the trends and events going on in the world. To ensure this, talk about current events in your sales meetings.
An easy way to start a current events conversation during a sales meeting is to have everyone on the team bring an article from a news site they’ve recently read. This way everyone will learn a little something about what industry trends are hot on the market and what topics to stay away from.
DO: Keep up-to-date on the latest trends that are shaking the world. Prospects will love that you and your team know so much about the current events that they’ll be more interested in talking with you.
DON’T: Talk about trends or events you know nothing about with potential clients. This will make you seem ingenuine and untrustworthy.
It’s time for a change. Sales meetings no longer have to be an hour long commitment no one wants to be a part of. With these 5 easy steps, you have all you need to turn your weekly meetings into something you and your sales team look forward to. By creating more enticing meetings, your sales team’s morale will skyrocket and everyone will be closer than ever. Who doesn’t want that?
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