Make Sales Meetings More Effective For Everyone

Having attended hundreds of sales meetings, I can safely and confidently say that most sales meetings are not worth the time spent or the effort made. I have also given hundreds of sales meetings and I can say the same thing about mine sometimes.

I feel strongly about having effective and worthwhile sales meetings. There have been many occasions where I felt I was not prepared enough and so cancelled the meeting. Better to go to plan B and cancel than to make one more meeting a waste of everyone's time.

Here's one thing that I think is important about meetings. They should be focused on the group and not individuals. Going over each other's performance that week or month is generally a waste of everyone's time. The manager should go over each person's performance with that person in private. There will be be a much greater and more mutually beneficial result. The meeting should stick to group topics such as changes in the company that affects everyone in the room. The sales meeting is a good place to talk about policy, changes in procedure to discuss incentive program overviews and so on. All group topics focused on the group. It is an effective way to communicate with many at one time.

Take it to another level and get feedback while they are all in the meeting. This makes the meeting interactive. Do some talking, get some feedback. Do some talking, get some input. Do some talking, get some discussion. Make sure and lead and control the time, but interaction is a powerful addition to make an effective sales meeting.

Most sales meetings could be recorded, put on a DVD and mailed out to the sales team or other members. So, it can't be the information that is the most important, otherwise the DVD is superior. It must be the physical presence that is important and along with that comes each personality and the interactivity that can make any sales meeting productive, effective and interesting at the same time.

Keep the meetings positive, upbeat, productive. Avoid discussing problems around the room. If someone brings up a problem and it can be solved quickly, great, otherwise it is better to have them submit their ideas in writing and work with them individually.

Sales meetings can be fun and interesting. Tomorrow I will tell you about my favorite meeting.