Archive for October, 2011

Sales Management – How to Conduct Effective Sales Team Meetings

If you have a sales team or are considering building one, at some point you will need to figure out how (and whether) you want to conduct group sales team meetings. This article answers some frequently asked questions about sales team meetings.

How often should sales team meetings be held?

I’m not a big fan of regularly scheduled sales team meetings. I find it boring to go person-by-person and discuss the status of specific opportunities, the percentage each individual is to quota, etc.

It’s one thing if a salesperson is doing something unusual or unique in pursuit of an opportunity and sharing what they are doing would constitute a good learning experience for other salespeople. However, I usually find that most discussions concerning individual opportunities are not very enriching for the other sales team members.

My philosophy is I prefer to bring the sales team together on an ad hoc basis when there is something to discuss that would benefit the entire team. This could be for sales training, product training, important announcements, etc.

With that said, if a sales team is more junior, or if you are in the process of changing your sales culture, or if you want to teach all of your salespeople a specific new skill, then regularly scheduled training meetings can make sense. However, if a sales team is more seasoned, or if it has a mix of people with substantially different levels of knowledge and experience, working with salespeople one-on-one tends to be more productive than group meetings.

How often should I meet individually with salespeople?

If a salesperson is achieving or exceeding quota, I like to schedule a weekly, one-hour meeting. The focus of this meeting is to:

 

  • Discuss the progress (or lack thereof) of pipeline opportunities
  • Discuss new opportunities that have been identified
  • Strategize how to best pursue key opportunities

 

Often the greatest value a sales manager can add when dealing with a productive salesperson is suggesting creative ideas for advancing opportunities through the sales cycle more quickly.

For salespeople who are NOT achieving quota (including new salespeople), I suggest that management schedule one-hour meetings as frequently as necessary (including daily) to help the salesperson get on track. Going on “buddy calls” also provides great opportunities to observe the salesperson in action.

In these meetings the focus should be on determining:

 

  • The quantity and quality of the salesperson’s activities
  • Whether their activities are producing the desired results
  • Sources of and solutions for any challenges they are running into

 

When performance issues are identified, conducting repetitive role plays is often the most productive way for management to help the salesperson become more comfortable executing specific skills and approaches properly. As the salesperson becomes more comfortable with, and more effective at executing, key steps in the sales process, meeting frequency can be reduced until you get to a single, scheduled, one-hour meeting each week.

Should members of the marketing team attend sales team meetings?

Absolutely… especially if you are trying to instill a “one team” mindset.

When hosting a joint meeting that includes both Sales and Marketing representatives, try to focus the meeting agenda on information that will help the members of the two organizations understand each other better and work together more effectively to produce the desired end result (which is usually increased sales, higher profits, etc.). For example:

 

  • If marketing is conducting a campaign to generate sales leads, there should be discussion about what constitutes a qualified lead
  • If marketing would like the sales team to report information to help marketing gauge the effectiveness of a campaign, there should be discussion about:
  • The information that is being requested
  • Whether the sales team is the best resource to provide the requested information
  • Why marketing needs the information
  • The accountability sales management will ask the salespeople to accept related to providing the requested information
  • The frequency with which the information needs to be provided
  • How sales management will inspect to ensure that the necessary information is being provided in a consistent and timely fashion

 

There could be many other agenda items, but they will generally fit under one of two umbrellas: (1) helping Sales and Marketing understand each other better, and (2) helping Sales and Marketing work together more effectively.

Relationship Marketing – What It Means, What It Is and How To Do It Effectively

Relationship Marketing is sort of the buzz word these days. You hear it everywhere you go with almost every kind of media. The question is do you really understand what it means and how to create great relationships with your prospects and clients.

It’s often been said that people buy from people they know, like and trust. This statement gets truer with each passing year as people are more and more skeptical.

So, the question is how to really build this know, like, and this trust factor, so people are more likely to invest in your products and services as opposed to going somewhere else?

One of the things to look at and think about is how you start the relationship with a prospect. Do you do it by immediately trying to get them to invest in a product or service (this is typically called one-step marketing or sales process), or do you attract people to you with a free offer where you wow them with great content and give them a reason to want to know more about you, your company and even your products and services?

It’s always interesting especially on social media when you friend or follow somebody and the first thing that happens is they send you a message or post on your wall trying to get you to business with them or buy something from them. You don’t know what they do, they essentially know nothing about you, or what you do, but they are sure they can help you. It’s laughable, but it happens almost every day.

Building a relationship with your prospects and clients takes time and too many business owners aren’t willing to invest the time it takes to build that relationship. We live in a society that wants instant gratification and that really works against the business owner who isn’t willing to invest some time to build a great relationship with clients.

It takes a long-term attitude and approach to really build and keep up a loyal relationship with your clients. The pay off can be worth it, both in terms of the relationship and the money you make. When you actually take time to build a real relationship with a client, that client feels a connection to you, a loyalty to you, that gives you many advantages, like:

· They will invest more money with you over their lifetime as a client
· They will be your client longer
· They will consume your products and services, which means they will want more and more of what you have (provided you are giving them good content and treating them well)
· They will refer others to you
· They will be more likely to ascend through your funnel into your more expensive programs, events and coaching
· You have more time and opportunity to make a real impact and difference in their business and personal lives

A great way to really build this relationship with your clients is to communicate with them in a variety of media on a regular basis. You know you have made an impact when you start getting clients and prospects who send messages inquiring if your Ezine or blog post is later than they expected, or if they haven’t heard from you on one of the social networks for a while.

People are watching you and what you’re doing in your business and you never know who you’re affecting and how or when the time will be right for them to make a decision that it’s time for them to get involved with you.

It might happen because of a particular blog post, or social media message. It might happen because they especially liked a note you put in your Ezine, or because you just announced an event and they have waited to meet you in person.

Consistent, good quality content that is interesting to the person you are communicating to in the media they want to get it from, over some time will create a relationship that has the opportunity to build over time and turn into a lasting friendship and there is no better time than now to start building those kinds of relationships.