How to Run an Effective Sales Meeting in Under 20 Minutes

Sales meetings are crucial to a sales team’s success. But a poorly-run, disorganized meeting is inconvenient and a waste of everyone’s time.

在我的职业生涯中，我学会了如何举办仅持续20分钟的生产销售会议。我使用的技术涵盖了所有基础，而无需花费太多时间在单个议程项目上。

Here's my proven technique for running an efficient sales meeting.

销售会议主题

在我的团队,为这些梅伊的首要问题tings is,"How can you progress each deal as quickly as possible and stay on track towards your goal?"

为了帮助团队最好的回答这个问题，我们的销售会议侧重于两个要点：

1.要求交易状态。

The salesperson and I run through every deal in our CRM that’s about to close. For example, if we’re trying to sell to ACME corporation, I’ll ask the representative if they’ve reached out to the contact recently.

If they haven’t reached out recently, I’ll ask a few simple questions about the deal. This typically instills some urgency around contacting the prospect. Then, we’ll cover deals in the earlier stages of the sales process.

2. Track progress on outreach.

Every representative’s goal is to reach out to 150 people per week via email or phone. So, during our meetings, I ask my representatives about the number of emails and calls they’ve logged since our last meeting.

如果有必要,我看看数据得到一个精确的number. There's a good chance the representatives will either overestimate or underestimate how much outreach they're doing.

This is how we track progress on outreach:

Our representatives use this Google Sheets template to track their work. We’ve set up conditional formatting rules to turn the cell green when a salesperson reaches a target, let’s say, 200.

The colors change depending on how far off-target someone is. It’s a gradual progression from red to green.

Results have improved since our salespeople started following this process. We’ve also seen an increase in the number of meetings they booked by filling in these documents.

Before we implemented this, we gave our sales team a goal. For example, booking two to three meetings per week.

Our new structure helps representatives see exactly what they have to do every day. This makes executing much simpler and easier.

More importantly, it helps us keep our meetings short. We can find all the information we need in the document, so our meetings are locked in on what's most important.

Watch thisvideoto see a full breakdown of this document and download a template.

Any effective sales meeting starts with a focused, intentional agenda. Let's look at the value and necessity behind that key component.

Weekly Sales Meeting Agenda

议程是任何生产销售会议的心跳。拥有一个明确定义，结构良好的人将帮助您的代表了解他们期望在会议之后可以走开的信息。

For most sales teams, weekly sales meetings are a place to discuss current sales deals, targets, and projects. These items should take up the bulk of your agenda. Here's a suggestion for what yours might look like:

1. Reviewing numbers from last week.
2. Planning for the coming week.
3. 回答销售代表的任何问题。
4. Discussion items (assigning specific tasks, etc.).

1.审查上周的数字。

UseKey Performance Indicators（KPI）每周跟踪团队的进度，并在团队每周的销售会议上查看KPI。跟踪KPI可以帮助您的团队量化其成功，并帮助您的公司做出有见地的业务决策。bob全站app

During the meetings, discuss essential KPIs. Rhythm Systems recommendscreating a KPI dashboard和列出10–12 kpis有四个类别：客户，收入，流程和员工。然后，查看上一周的KPI，并将其用作跳板，以创建本周的KPI。

2. Planning for the coming week.

您的销售会议议程应帮助您的团队设定目标并计划本周。专注于讨论新的指标，客户反馈，您的团队的新机会，action items本周，以及pipeline updates。

Planning for the coming week will help your team members stay on the same page and develop solutions to potential obstacles that may slow your progress.

3. Answering any questions sales representatives have.

Your team’s sales representatives may have questions about prospects or require clarification of missing information. Take time to address these questions to prevent misunderstandings or delays during the week.

4. Discussion items (assigning specific tasks, etc.).

Before you end the sales meeting, summarize the main points and your team’s tasks for the week. In addition to assigning tasks to the team as a whole, assign each team member specific tasks. Note each task’s deadline and who has been assigned each task.

Once you've set your agenda, send a calendar invitation to your team to let them know when and where the meeting is taking place.

Use the following tips to keep your meeting on track when the time comes.

1. Set an objective.

设定明确的目标有助于保持销售会议的短暂和专注。请记住，您要问您的团队成员的时间，因此您应该尊重并承认不要花太多时间。

What’s the purpose of your sales meetings? It could be any of the following:

• Getting everyone up to speed.
• Reviewing project plans.
• Setting and monitoring KPIs.
• 解决问题并应对挑战。

Ideally, a sales meeting has just one goal, but that can be hard to pull off. Still, as long as you’re tackling less than three objectives during each session, you can reliably and consistently conduct effective meetings.

You can use ameeting agenda templateto outline these goals and share it with your team beforehand, so everyone's on the same page about what to expect in a meeting.

Download for Free

2.分享议程。

我们已经谈到了在进行有效的销售会议时的简洁，精心计划的议程的重要性，但是简单地将议程汇总为会议并举行会议并不为您带来太大的作用。

You need to share those plans with your team ahead of time. When attendees know what your meeting is about, they'll be better prepared and more inclined to engage in meaningful discussion.

Provide an agenda in the calendar invite for a meeting. This gives your representatives time to do their homework, so they’ll develop ideas and relevant questions. Ideally, you'll put together a consistent agenda with updated information for your meetings every week. That kind of continuity will allow your meetings to run as efficiently as possible.

3. Create meeting norms and establish expectations.

Your team should have a set of agreed-upon meeting norms and expectations that everyone abides by for maximum productivity.

Make sure your meeting norms outline the roles and responsibilities of everyone in attendance to help minimize the chaos that large teams are usually susceptible to. Here are some meeting norms and expectations that may be helpful for your sales team:

• Sales team meetings will start and end on time.
• All team members are expected to come prepared to discuss meeting agenda topics.
• Team members are to stay on track.
• 我们将一次进行一次对话。

Based on your sales team’s dynamic and current meeting style, you can adjust these expectations.

4. Facilitate the conversation to keep things on track.

We’ve all attended meetings that have gone off the rails a bit. The ones where the agenda wasn't followed and the main objectives of the meeting weren't addressed.

It might go without saying, but you need to do what you can to avoid that kind of chaos and the productivity loss that comes with it. If you want to keep things on track, have a facilitator oversee your meetings to ensure your representatives remain focused and discuss the agenda items.

What if one of the team members raises a critical topic? If it’s related to the agenda, address it. But set a time limit for those kinds of discussions, and be prepared to get back to the core points of the meeting quickly.

You can also implement a "parking lot" where someone from the team writes down important topics for the team to follow up on later.

5. Have representatives provide relevant data before the meeting.

Does your agenda include information that needs to be prepared or presented by sales representatives? If so, make sure you have a process in place for how you can gather this information beforehand.

这可能包括在一个标准的甲板,你share with representatives and asking them to update their information the day before the meeting. When you have the materials you need from representatives ahead of time, you aren’t cutting into the meeting time by looking for files or data during the meeting.

6. Celebrate your team’s wins.

Celebrating your team’s wins at sales meetings can help to boost morale, improve productivity, and give your team the recognition it deserves.

In an episode of Jostle's工作人员podcast, Matt Thieleman, a leadership coach, discusses “future focus,” the tendency to achieve a goal, then immediately focus on accomplishing the next goal. Thieleman states that we should celebrate milestones instead of focusing on the future becauserecognizing your team’s small achievements is crucial for keeping everyone on track。

7. Share action items and next steps.

So you’ve successfully run an efficient sales meeting with your team, congratulations! But what happens when it ends?

生产性销售会议应始终以行动计划结束。您的代表必须牢记一个可实现的目标。然后，在下一次会议上，您可以讨论他们是否取得了成就。

这里有一些例子：

• Get the client to the proposal stage.
• Land on a defined budget.
• Identify and book a meeting with the decision-maker.

Make sure you incorporate these items into your next meeting agenda for continuity.

8.向团队成员寻求反馈。

Asking your team members for feedback during sales meetings can help your team improve efficiency, increase collaboration, build trust, and eliminate roadblocks. During meetings, ask your team members about their performance and the team’s overall performance.

Sentric HR suggests asking一两个反馈问题during weekly meetings. Sentric HR says that questions should focus on weekly growth and encourage team members to think critically about the impact of the previous week’s work on the team’s current performance. Asking questions and initiating discussions during team meetings can help to在团队成员之间建立友情。

1.确定是否需要发生这次会议。

"This could have been an email."

Those six words can frustrate your team members and undermine their faith in your management if they're said consistently. Some information doesn't warrant taking time out of everyone's schedule to sit down and talk things out.

When you're thinking about calling for a meeting, assess if your announcements lend themselves to constructive discussion, are urgent enough to need to be conveyed immediately, and can't be effectively relayed in text or via a video service likeLoom。如果确定您的消息符合该条件，请致电会议。如果他们不这样做，请考虑发送电子邮件。

2. Know what you're trying to get across.

每次会议都应该有明确的目的。您需要了解您需要说的话，将其折叠到您的议程中，并准备保持讨论既简洁又有信息。您团队的时间很有价值，因此请确保您不会浪费它。

3. Practice any sections that don't require off-the-cuff discussion.

If your meeting will revolve around specific action items, drill down what you will say to get them across. Take some time to rehearse those elements.

You can better manage your time during meetings by practicing and preparing to minimize rambling.

4.准备执行时间限制。

Effective internal sales meetings are typically time-bound, and if you expect to have your team members plan around them, you need to respect their schedules. That means setting firm time constraints and abiding by them.

尝试从议程的关键方面进行前面加载，并让较不重要的元素稍微退缩。如果您注意到自己准时出现，则需要准备切断物品，要么保存下次没有覆盖的地面，要么通过电子邮件发送该信息。

5. Invite the right people.

您在会议上涵盖的信息是否会对所有与会者产生合法影响？您的销售组织会从会议中利用的团队成员中受益吗？

Those are questions you need to consider before inviting someone to your meeting. As we've established, internal sales meetings can be a frustrating time drain when done wrong — with the potential to take a toll on morale — so make sure you're only inviting your team members who stand to gain from it when you prepare.

How often should you have a sales meeting?

这个问题没有明确的答案。您的销售会议的最佳频率将依靠诸如销售组织的规模，团队表现方式，您想要的会议以及公司文化等因素。bob全站app

有效的销售管理是在信任和指导之间取得平衡的问题。例如，安排太多会议可能会让您脱颖而出，但是预订一些会议可能会让您的团队的表现摆脱困境。

As we mentioned earlier, weekly sales meetings are often the sweet spot. But they can't be too over-the-top or time-consuming. If they drag on, you'll waste everyone's time, and your team's morale might take a hit. So follow these tips to keep your meetings short and productive.

Editor's note: This post was originally published on January 4, 2020, and has been updated for comprehensiveness.