The impact of sales has grown dramatically with the addition of full-time sales representatives, dedicated to prospecting and onboarding net-new clients, and thus managing the sales team is not an easy job. On top of monitoring quotas and meeting targets, as a sales team leader, you’re also in charge of hiring the right people, training them, and upholding team morale. The role comes with a lot of stress and pressure, but by following simple strategies for managing the sales team, you can set it up for success.
- Value every team members’ experience
You may have people in your team who are more experienced than you. Being the leader, you have to try and understand which representative knows more about what and acknowledge their viewpoint and recommendation. - Hire coachable representatives
As Mark Roberge, Chief Revenue Officer of the HubSpot Sales Division said, ‘coachability is key’. You should have a sales team that is good at taking feedback and knows how to take criticism positively. Measure this by doing a role play where the representative conducts the demo of your product and services. Ask them about their own views about their performance. Then give them feedback. Mark them not just on how evenly the demo went, but how open they were to self-assessment, taking, criticism, feedback, and implementing it. - Be a leader, not just a demanding boss
There is not a single employee who enjoys the dictatorship of a boss. So always remember to lead them rather than bossing them around. Being thoughtful, humble, and respectful is great for the long run with coworkers. To be bold and decisive at times is acceptable but to be demandable just because you are the boss is unreasonable. - Specialize early to grow sales
Don’t treat all your salespeople the same. They all have different personalities. Your role is one of the mentors. You have to keep your team away from internal politics or bad sales behavior. Work on making it easy for them to focus on their job and be more successful. Different people need to be managed differently. Segment them by their inclination and strengths. Subdivide your prospects and subdivide your sales team to address them, especially as you grow. Remember there is no one size that fits all solutions. - Be patient about difficulties with new trends and technologies
Some employees might not be familiar with certain processes, tools, or technologies. Adapting and accommodating to the new changes in the market in terms of tools, technology, and day-to-day tasks can be a bit challenging for them. Give them some time for sufficient training to make sure everyone on your team is up to date with the latest trends, tools, and technology. - Treat people management as a constant learning process
If you want to evolve to become a better sales leader, then keep learning about managing salespeople. As a leader, you will see different kinds of situations within your team. Predicting all of them is really hard but educating yourself can act as your armor to deal with any such possible scenario. They have the most experience dealing with other people according to company standards. - Transparency
Aim to design a transparent organization. Transparency means that all your team members should know each team member’s goals and their progress against them. Work ethics should be on display for everyone. For instance, the number of calls made every day or what each person’s pipeline looks like should be visible to everyone.
Killer tips for organizing result driven sales team meetings
- Define a central Focus
Rather than allowing your sales meetings to become just another item, set a purpose of discussion prior to the meeting. Keep your meetings focused on one topic. Consider how you can settle down your sales meeting into a single pursuit statement. For instance, discuss the sales strategy for upcoming project launches, review results, and highlight trends and top performers. In addition to information, use your team meetings to offer real examples or illustrations that allow your key points to resonate with your sales team. - Short and crisp
You don’t have to set meetings for hours to be efficient and effective. Your team would always favor a 15-30 minute meeting that is impactful and productively runs. You can shorten the sales meeting time by focusing only on your agenda. Your meetings should be short and crisp. Enhancing particular talking points and actions helps cut down on irrelevancy and purposeless questions. Remember to send your agendas to team members via email in advance. By accepting your invitation, your team members recognize that you’re on the same page. Doing this can cut down notable chatter and preventable back-and-forth on the day of your meeting. This renders into getting down to business without wasting any time.What should your sales meeting agenda cover:
1. The purpose of your meeting.
2. Place of meeting and team attendees.
3. Length of meeting.
4. Shortlists of points to talk about and decisions to be taken.
5. What teammates are expected to know beforehand. - Establish expectations and etiquettes
If your sales meetings tend to extend for long then you are lacking explicitly addressing expectations and etiquette. Perhaps the most urgent expectation to set is in regard to time. In a sales meeting, attendees’ productivity and engagement tend to drop off after about half an hour. Remember, the purpose of putting a hard time limit on your meetings is to keep things moving, not stress anyone out. You don’t want to boost down your team’s enthusiasm or discourage anyone from asking questions. Give every member a chance to speak but also reserve the right to stop them when the clock’s ticking. Try to block out action items. Remember, the purpose of putting a strong time limit on your meetings is to keep things moving, not stressing anyone out. Saving time in meetings means being firm about the listed non-navigable: a. Attendees must come to the meeting being prepared for the meeting agenda
b. Teammates will respect the time of fellow team members. - Motivation
Sales representatives like to receive praise and acknowledgment for a job well done in any setting. A team meeting is an excellent opportunity to praise and bring attention toward representatives who have achieved success in activities carried out since the last meeting or overall results. There needs to be some motivational force to drive them to succeed. It can be incentives or recognition. Furthermore, this recognition contributes to the evolution of positive work culture and job satisfaction. - Make it engaging
Your next sales meeting doesn’t have to be a boring one. These days the majority of people are not engaged at work and these uninspiring meetings certainly aren’t helping, are they?
For starters, don’t overlook the importance of zeal and positivity. Treat your meetings with energies that you want your attendees to pick up. A common strategy for positively appealing your sales team from the start is to begin by offering some acknowledgment. Praising or giving a quick shout-out can work wonders for your team’s level of engagement and motivation. Begin by going over your top performers for the previous week. Acknowledge your top representatives by revenue, meetings set, calls made, and emails sent. It sparks friendly competition and adds a little energy to sales meetings.Some additional sales meeting ideas that could boost engagement:
a. Call on attendees: The aim is not to single anyone out. Consider how asking questions of attendees help inspire active listening. This strategy also keeps you from doing all the talking and makes your sales meeting feel like it belongs to the team.b. Work in groups: In case the sales meeting becomes lengthy, remember to give your team a chance to discuss things out with each other and come to a conclusion as a group. This sort of evaluative thinking keeps your sales team sharp and interested.
c. Roleplay: Discussing, ‘what if’s’ enacting out sales scenarios is an amazing exercise for the sales team. Roleplaying has double advantages. It makes your meeting seem more actionable and also gives team members a chance to participate.
d. Switch up your setting:
Try holding the occasional meeting beyond the walls of the office. Be it an off-site meeting or virtual meetings, a change in environment can bring a lot of positive impact on your team.
Not every sales meeting should look the same and boring. Evolving your format and approach keeps people on their toes. Bringing in new, engaging activities also affixes the expectation that they’ll participate in the process. - Establish a clear outcome:
The most essential key to a result-driven meeting is the buy-in from your representatives. Thus, establish a clear outcome to specify how the sales meeting will impact the team or individual performance. When representatives understand the connection between the meeting purpose and sales objectives, buy-in has more chances to occur. - End with action steps:
Always end the meeting by identifying the next course of action resulting from the items covered. All sales meetings must result in some form of action. Every teammate should have a clear understanding of what they should do next. For instance, if a meeting directing technology tools, action steps might include near-term training, accountability for participation, and coaching reviews. It can even be as simple as hitting a sales target or making the report.
A result-driven sales meeting should have a clear plan, brief topics, efficient use of time, and clear action steps. A consistent approach helps your team understand the value of meetings in the overall scheme of the company and efforts to optimize performance. When meetings have a solid purpose and you provide your team with some freedom to interact, they immediately become more meaningful and productive. Further, by setting the right expectations and keeping track of your sales team’s data, you can align those meetings to reach your goals. Platforms like FunnL take care of these minute details to make it a successful organization. FunnL has been successfully generating sales qualified meetings with the help of their united team and the right approach as a part of its framework. FunnL today is the fastest growing platform to generate successful sales qualified meetings and has generated more than 10,000 leads for about 100 companies. Keeping the sales team on point with measures like result driven sales team meetings, the prospective leads, and making sure the engagement level is high is surely one of the main reasons for FunnL’s success.
