Most companies with sales teams have sales meetings, yet very few organizations get the most out of them. Understanding how to run the perfect sales meeting can increase sales at your organization dramatically. Here are five easy tips to running the perfect sales meeting:
- Meet Consistently: So many organizations have sporadic sales meetings. They are scheduled irregularly, rather than consistently. Top sales organizations must have a regularly scheduled meeting. That means that every sales person in the organization knows not to schedule something else for Monday at 8AM because they know that there will be a meeting.
- Have an Agenda: So often, sales meetings run aimlessly with maximum distractions and banter. The perfect sales meeting will have a strict agenda that is held to at all costs.
- Time-Bound: Sales meetings should have a clearly allotted time. No meeting should ever run over 90 minutes, ever. Each item on the agenda should also have a specific amount of time. Thus, pipeline review will go for 20 minutes, followed by sales activity review for 15, etc…
- Pull Back from Tangents: Let’s face it, sales people love to talk. And when the entire group gets caught up in a tangent, valuable time is being wasted. It is critical that whoever is running the meeting keeps the conversation focused exclusively on the agenda items. If something comes up that is important, but not on the agenda, make a note to discuss it later.
- Keep Track of Accountability: At the end of every great sales meeting, a manager must always get commitments of the salespeople for the week. This means that time must be allotted to the agenda at the end to know what each sales person is going to do. Be sure that the commitments aren’t fluffy stuff, like make more calls, but rather specific activities, like make 50 prospecting calls. Write the commitments down and review them in the next meeting.
By following these five steps, you create an environment of respect for the sales people’s time and the team begins to respect the accountability.
How do you run an effective sales meeting? Please share below in the comments.
Marc Wayshak is author of the book Game Plan Selling and a sales keynote speaker.
Game Plan Selling and a sales trainer in Boston. 
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About the Author Marc Wayshak
Marc is is the best-selling author of three books on sales and leadership, including the highly acclaimed titles Game Plan Selling, The High-Velocity Sales Organization and his forthcoming book, Sales Conversations, Mastered.
Marc is a contributor to Inc, HubSpot, Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Huffington Post Business. He also hosts a popular YouTube channel on sales strategy with over 103,000 subscribers.
Marc helps thousands of people his data-driven, science-based approach to selling that utilizes all the best tools available to sales organizations today.
