6 Barriers to Effective Sales Team Meetings and How to Avoid Them
The benefits of regular sales team meetings cannot be overstated; they can serve to reinforce the team spirit, help to identify new strategies, leads and opportunities, bring salespeople up-to-date with the latest business developments and encourage knowledge-sharing. Managing Sales Team Meetings is an art in its own right, which is why Maguire Training offers comprehensive training dedicated to enabling delegates to run efficient and productive sales team meetings.
Sales team meetings are only of value if every participant gains something useful from them, but a meeting's effectiveness can be hampered by a number of factors. In this article, Maguire Training shares with you six barriers to effective sales team meetings and how to avoid them.
1) Sales team meetings are regarded as an ordeal rather than of benefit
Few things in business life are as dreary as a meeting that drags on for hours. Sales team meetings need to be short and feature a varied agenda that must be adhered to. The benefits of a well-run forty-five-minute weekly sales team meeting far outweigh a monthly three-hour marathon session which bores the sales team to death.
2) The chairperson dominates the sales team meeting
For attendees to gain the greatest value from meetings, everyone should be allowed to have an input and team interactivity should be encouraged. Each salesperson should be allowed to contribute news, ideas, successes and updates with the person taking responsibility for time-keeping and ensuring that the agenda isn't strayed from.
3) Sales team meetings are boring
Boredom equals apathy, and an apathetic sales team meeting is valueless. Meetings should be lively, fun, engaging and inspiring. A few examples of ways in which sales team meetings can be enlivened include the introduction of different presentation methods, surprise guest speakers, prize-giving for sales achievements or interactive question-and-answer sessions.
4) Sales team meetings offer attendees little real value
A good sales meeting agenda should offer variety and always include something that is of value to attendees, such as a short group training session, brainstorming, role-playing, sharing of best practices and other developmental items. However, if there is genuinely no compelling reason to hold a sales team meeting at all, it may be more productive to cancel and reschedule a meeting rather than waste attendees' time.
5) Sales team meetings are random and unfocused
An effective sales team meeting requires preparation and structure. An agenda should be formalised and distributed to attendees in advance of each meeting so that they will know what to expect and can prepare any items for contribution. During the meeting, the chairperson should introduce each agenda item and ensure that it is focused upon and returned to should the conversation stray off-topic.
6) Sales team meetings are poorly attended or not taken seriously
Of course, attendance at sales team meetings can be made compulsory, but if attendees feel that there are more worthwhile uses for their time this may cause resentment, apathy or a failure to take meetings seriously. By eliminating the barriers to effective and productive sales team meetings outlined in points 1 to 5, and ensuring that attendees have fun, interact, learn something useful and have the opportunity to contribute and be heard, attendance at regular meetings should be no problem at all!
How can we help?
Maguire Training can help sales managers plan and conduct highly effective and productive sales team meetings and offer a range of comprehensive and valuable classroom-based courses. For delegates who prefer the convenience of online training, modules such as Managing Sales Team Meetings are also available via Maguire Training's innovative and versatile E-learning platform.
