How do I run an internal sales team meeting/review Ronan? It is a question I get asked every single week. And it is a significant challenge for small companies. The reality is that most small companies hold operational meetings and not sales meetings. You must hold a weekly sales review in order to be an effective sales leader.
You need a sales review that engages people. In my experience, it is rare that sales meetings are engaging. Yours should be. Many sales managers run sales meetings as if they were war rooms. There is a lot of testosterone, a lot of finger pointing and very little in the way of motivation and learning.
Your Weekly Sales Review
Here is how I propose you should run weekly sales review. I stress review and not meeting. I do this because I believe it should be short, energetic, engaging and should avoid detail. You can reserve the detailed analyses for your one-to-one conversations with your salespeople or your monthly in-depth sales audits.
The format below is based on a 30-minute weekly review. Before I introduce you to the format I have to stress the importance of making this habit your weekly non-negotiable. It is in my view the most critical meeting of the sales coach or sales leader’s week. It is why it needs to be made non-negotiable.
The 30-minute weekly sales review format
Step 1
Each individual salesperson gets a total of three minutes to run through
-Their wins this week. Always start with the wins. Always start with positives. And remember a win isn’t always a sale. A win could be a member of the team has just secured an appointment with a key prospect. A win could be the member of the team has just sold a new product to an existing customer.
-Their numbers this week. Ideally, the numbers have been distributed in advance of the meeting. And the main focus is on brevity and simplicity. What were their weekly sales activity goals? And what were their actual results against these goals?
If you have a team of five salespeople, it should take no more on 12 to 15 minutes.
Step 2
Next, you focus on where people are stuck/their challenges are. This part of the sales meeting will never be the same. It is the part of the sales meeting were now as a team focus on problem-solving.
Each team member highlights the key challenge they’ve had in the week. The chair of the meeting nominates the greatest challenge, and for the next 10 minutes as a group, you brainstorm ideas to solve those challenges and problems.
Remember, if there are no challenges you can also use this opportunity for some sales coaching. For example, you could spend 10 minutes discussing how to overcome objections.
Step 3
Next, you get your team to talk about their top three priorities for the upcoming week. There many benefits to this phase.
-It encourages the team to focus on their priorities
-The team get to learn about other team members priorities. So now we have shared understanding.
-The sales leader has an opportunity to coach team members what the real priorities are.
Here at Insthinktive Sales Leadership Ltd. we characterise priorities in two ways
1) Bad things happen when we don’t do these things. These are the types of priorities that everybody finds it easy to identify. A classic example is, if we don’t send that tender by Friday at 12 PM we will be excluded from the process. The bad things will happen we miss that deadline. That’s easy.
2) Good things happen when we do these things. Well, these are the harder things to put into our week, for example, we all know that learning and education is a good thing. If we learn more we improve our skill base we become more valuable, and in selling, we become a lot more successful. However, how many sales teams have “learning” in their diaries for the upcoming week? Learning is a good thing, good things happen when we learn. It is a priority.
Now it’s up to you. Make it a weekly non-negotiable. Follow the process. It works, I have seen it work in dozens of organisations.
WARNING!!
Getting this weekly sales review down to 30 minutes every week will take time. Give yourself at least 12 weeks to get the team familiarised with the structure. The patient over this 12 week period. You may find at the first attempt takes 50 to 60 minutes. That’s okay, keep working at it. Keep reinforcing to the team but they need to come prepared. But if they do come prepared it will become much more effective an enjoyable process.
Also, don’t be afraid to have a little bit of fun with the process. You can use an alarm and time people. This can be a little bit of fun as well. After all, selling is supposed to be enjoyable.
Finally, don’t allow yourself or others the slip through the net. Avoid the “I can’t make this Friday’s meeting Ronan; I will be travelling”. Yes, there will be circumstances, when it is unavoidable. However, in my experience, the exceptions become the rule and very quickly weekly sales review gets forgotten.
Key Takeaways
Your Weekly Sales Review is a foundational block when building your sales infrastructure. It needs to be highly structured. Action focused, energetic and fun. It is NOT an operations review. You focus on wins, key numbers, challenges, priorities and actions.
Regards Ronan
Ronan is the “Sales Infrastructure Guy”. Helping high growth tech companies build world-class sales systems and processes that scale.
Call me on +353(86) 7732201
Ronan Kilroy | Insthinktive Sales Leadership Ltd. | Blanchardstown, | Dublin 15, | Office 01 8220523
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