How Singaporean sales leaders can run great sales meetings

Calvin is a Sales Director in Singapore leading a team of sales professionals. He's an advocate of training and enrolled his team in a sales training programme in Singapore. Calvin wanted his team to be more proactive in prospecting and looking for opportunities.

During the sales training programme, the team shared their common sales challenges, best practices and success stories for the first time (some had been there 10 years) and learned as much from each other as they did from the programme. They also shared how their attempts at being proactive were at times met with micro-management by their Sales Director.

How could the sales training programme be successful if Calvin’s team returns to an environment that doesn’t support what they've learned? Their day-to-day environment must support their learning so that their new behaviours become habits.

These new behaviours must then become habits in order for sales to improve. Despite that, what do many leaders do when sales don't improve after training? Send the team for more training of course!

So what could Calvin (and you as a sales leader) do to ensure the team consistently adopts desired selling behaviours?

Regular Sales Meetings
After the sales training programme, I met with Calvin and suggested that he call a team meeting and ask each member to share their biggest takeaway and action they will now take.

This would reenforce their learning and increase the likelihood of follow-through on actions. How many of your past training materials are collecting dust on a shelf somewhere? I also suggested Calvin hold regular sales meetings.

Here are some tips on running a great sales meeting:

Sharing
Your team is looking to you for guidance, direction and leadership. Share your “big picture” strategies, priorities, targets, and KPIs with the team. As a sales leader, you should only focus on the "what" (vision and objectives).

Execution
Leave the "how" (tactics and implementation) to your sales team. Focus on what actions they’ll take by the next meeting. How will they keep sales opportunities moving forward? Each team member should share at least 1 takeaway and action they will take now.

Listening
Listen more and talk less. Sales meetings should not become sales training programmes, product knowledge training sessions or reviews of what's happened since the last meeting. Put away the PowerPoint! Instead, ask questions and stimulate discussions of real-life selling situations.

Learning
Ask team members to share specific sales challenges (closing, gatekeepers, objections, etc.) Encourage the group to share tips that have worked for them and could be useful to the group. Ask them to share the latest sales book they read, audio they heard or video they watched, and what was their biggest takeaway.

When I work with Sales Directors like Calvin, I encourage them to have regular sales meetings so the team can plan their schedules around those dates. What if they’re traveling? No excuse! They can join the meeting via conference call to contribute and learn. Make these meetings a habit. Lead by example.

Have an agenda for each meeting and ask the team for their input. What would they like to focus on? Your team will be more engaged if they've contributed. Be sure to circulate the agenda at least 24 hours prior so the team comes prepared. Remember to respect their schedules by starting on-time and ending on-time (maybe even early!).

Your ability to run great sales meetings, will improve the return on your sales training investment and ultimately determine the success of your sales team. If you're looking to build a high performance sales team, schedule a sales meeting with your team now!