Effective sales meetings can seem absolutely impossible to facilitate. Employees often walk into these meetings with a mindset that makes them feel as though any meeting is a waste of their time – after all, what could be more important than hitting the phones or lining up prospect meetings? This is especially true for sales kickoffs. We recently partnered with Paycor’s VP of Sales and launched a webinar entitled “Tips for Creating your Best Sales Kickoff yet.” If you’re looking to hear from industry experts who offer a more complete and in depth analysis for larger scale meetings beyond the 3 tips given here that focus on more routine meetings, then feel free to watch the webinar.
Are you used to hearing the groans and eye rolls and even the blatant lack of attention during the meeting itself? If so, then you need to hear this! The first step in cultivating an interactive sales meeting is getting your employees to be active and present. This can be difficult to do, especially if you’re known to start meetings late (Don’t be that person). You must commit to always, and we mean always staring every sales meeting on time in order to be sensitive to the resources your salespeople dedicate to the time away from active selling.
These tips and tricks for an effective sales meeting will help you facilitate a productive meeting and improve the reaction your employees display when they hear “it’s time for a meeting.”
Tip #1: Involve Your Sales Team
Your sales team already feels as though they don’t have enough hours in the day, let alone enough time to dedicate to a meeting that doesn’t pertain to them. Be sure to seek out their input for the meeting in advance so it’s beneficial to all – not just sales management. By asking for their input several days (or even weeks) before the meeting is scheduled, you’ll likely spark their interest and find they are more involved when the meeting day arrives.
Of course, you will also need to cover topics that are important to executives and management during your sales meetings. However, it’s crucial to add topics to the meeting that provide the most value to your sales team, keep them engaged, and facilitate an environment where they can bring additional topics to the table.
Along with involving engaging topics, your most effective sales meetings will come from involving your top salespeople. These are the individuals your entire team looks up to throughout every quarter. When these top individuals are actively involved and engaged, you can expect an interactive sales meeting. Allow your top salespeople to start conversations. When these individuals speak, your sales team will respond and continue the conversation.
Tip #2: Create an Inspiring Meeting Theme
Every effective sales meeting should have an overarching meeting theme. The best themes are based on what resonates with your sales team. Particularly, big challenges make for the best meeting themes.
For example, if you have a large account that may be turning to a competitor or your team has been experiencing a seasonality slump, focusing the meeting around these challenges provides a platform for an interactive sales meeting. Your sales team will want to engage in discussions because the entire meeting relates to something that – quite literally – affects their bottom line (and yours!).
Tip #3: Interactive & Content Focused Meeting Are Key
If you want to have more effective sales meetings, you must create specific content that is memorable, applicable, and makes your team look forward to the next meeting. Since salespeople are highly competitive, involving games or competitions during the meeting can create a fun environment that facilitates discussion and collaboration. However, keep in mind that any games should relate to the theme of the meeting. Especially effective sales meetings will involve interactive aspects that work toward solving challenges the sales team is facing.
Your interactive and routine sales meeting doesn’t have to take place in a normal conference room. In fact, moving your meeting to a huddle space is one of the best ways to get your sales team out of their normal routine and their comfort zone. If your sales meetings are always held in the same space, you will eventually fall into a rut – if they haven’t already. If you have a small team, packing them into tight quarters and creating forms of competition or gamification around the space can really make an impact.
Between topics that are relevant to the sales team and transforming a “boring” meeting mentality into fun and competitive one, you will create more effective meetings that everyone in attendance will not only enjoy, but benefit from. A huge win-win!
Need some more sales meeting inspiration? Bluewater is the AV company that can help you create interactive spaces for your sales meetings. We can help turn your conference room into a modern space that keeps employees engaged and your sales team satisfied. We are also a nationally recognized top live events company and can help produce and run your next large scale sales kickoff.
Don’t wait until after your next sales meeting to make the necessary changes. Contact us today to begin building an environment for your new interactive meeting process.
