What’s the point of a sales meeting – and how can you make it work for you?
I was asked once to help a senior manager develop as part of a long-term programme.
During this process, I sat in one of his regular sales meetings and observed what went on. The meeting was pretty unspectacular, to say the least, and I could see the other attendees were far from pleased having to sit through the early evening and getting very little in return. There was little ‘passion’ shown by anyone.
Does this picture sound too familiar? Well, I thought I would share some of the points that this manager and I discussed to give his meetings more impact.
Firstly, why do we hold meetings? When I asked this manager this question, the look I got from him said it all.
The reason why this meeting took place on a monthly basis was purely down to habit. It’s what managers do. It turned out that the meeting was a fixed item in the monthly round of events and the style of the meeting had been copied and handed down over the years from one predecessor to the next.
So we set about changing things.
The first issue we addressed was why the meeting was held in the first place.
There can be several reasons to hold a meeting: to spread information, to build the team, to instruct, to share best practice or to plan.
The manager thought about this and decided that normally he wanted three things from this monthly get-together.
Firstly, to have impact by building a sense of team and purpose, secondly to share ideas that work, and finally to make sure everyone was going into the next sales period with a workable plan. I could see that he was starting to feel much better and developing a better attitude toward next month’s meeting.
The second issue was to look at preparing properly. Like most sales people, his time management was poor and his priorities were ruled by too many demanding issues.
I could see that sometimes this was inescapable; however, this was not always the case. I do not expect line managers to spend days preparing: however, to go to the meeting usually with no preparation is unacceptable. If you know what you want from the meeting, usually this will make the preparation much simpler.
The third issue focused on the skills to run the meeting with impact.
The main trouble with the running of his meeting was that the meeting was all one way. A tell session. There was little room for sharing and discussion. So we looked at his role as the meeting chair. This is a highly skilled role. Firstly, he knows what he thinks about an issue – what he doesn’t always know is what others think.
This means using big open questions that get people to reflect on what they feel or think, e.g, – What do you think would get us better fees?
The secondary skill is to shut up, listen and encourage others to speak. You will be surprised what ideas people have. It is always useful to remember that a willing worker is worth many pressed ones! Remember, you are still the boss and retain the ability to veto things if they are impractical or expensive.
The fourth thing to review was the involvement of the team. This can be seen as a personal development tool. Delegate issues by selecting individuals to prepare some topic for the meeting.
This is a good way to spread best practice and improve individuals’ personal skills. Take people out of their comfort zone and stretch them.
We discussed the involvement of outside people occasionally. This really changes the tone of the meeting and the team can see you are delivering more impact for them. So invite solicitors to talk about sales progression or a surveyor on house construction. This has the added benefit of building local networks.
The last thing we addressed was progressing business by going into the next sales period with a workable plan of action. The poor sales meetings I attend usually fail because there are few concrete outputs from the meeting and therefore little sense of purpose or outcome. Managers beat their chests and are enthusiastic in terms of imploring even more effort, but little of substance arises. This comes from lack of managerial technique. The huff and puff approach, I think, merely covers up the lack of an action plan.
The objective must be to develop a workable plan to improve business. So the most important thing to focus on is what plans each person has worked out by themselves for the next month. Get people to talk about their successes and lessons learnt from last month and then quickly switch to the plan for next month. It is here that the manager needs to spend time on the detail and dig down into any generality.
A great question used by a former colleague was: “So what is it that you are specifically going to do?” He repeatedly asked this question until he got a specific answer.
Your team are sales people, and as such they should be always planning on how they can increase their sales results and thereby their income.
So what happened to the manager I was helping to develop? Well, his meetings immediately had more energy and those attending became more involved.
Results did improve. I can’t say that the meetings were directly attributable for this result – however, I would like to think so. One intangible benefit was that two members of this team went on to become managers in their own right.
* Philip Bowden is an estate agency trainer. He runs Bowden Training & Management Services and can be reached on 01296 584315
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