6 BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE SALES TEAM MEETINGS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM
Sales team
As we enter the summer months, many sales leaders are fiercely focused on starting the year’s second half strong. However, while closing out Q2 is critical, sales managers must also begin to focus on a solid start to Q3. One contributing factor to having a highly motivated and functioning team is having a culture of effective team meetings. Regular sales team meetings have many benefits; they can reinforce the team spirit, uncover leads and opportunities, create new sales strategies, bring salespeople up-to-date with the latest business developments and encourage knowledge-sharing.
Sales team meetings are only valuable if every participant gains an insightful takeaway, but several factors can hamper a meeting’s effectiveness. In this article, Kodiak Group shares six barriers to effective sales team meetings and how to avoid them.
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1- Sales team meetings are regarded as an ordeal rather than of benefit.
Few things in business life are as dreary as a repetitive meeting that seems to drag on for hours. Many poorly run meetings involve nothing more than every individual reporting their updated forecast and recent activities, which can be provided in a report! Therefore, ales team meetings must 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.
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2- The sales manager dominates the sales team meeting.
For attendees to gain the most significant value from meetings, everyone’s participation should be encouraged. So, each salesperson should be allowed to contribute news, ideas, successes, and updates, with the sales manager taking responsibility for keeping the meeting on track.
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3- Sales team meetings are boring.
Boredom equals apathy, and an apathetic sales team meeting is worthless. Meetings should be lively, fun, engaging, and inspiring. Here are a few examples of ways sales team meetings can be enlivened: introducing different presentation methods, surprise guest speakers, prize-giving for sales achievements, or interactive question-and-answer sessions.
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4- Sales team meetings offer attendees very little real value.
A good sales meeting agenda should offer variety and always include something valuable to attendees, such as a short group training session, brainstorming, role-playing, sharing best practices, and other developmental items. However, if there is genuinely no compelling reason to hold a sales team meeting, it may be more productive to cancel and reschedule the discussion rather than waste attendees’ time.
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5- Sales team meetings are random and unfocused.
An effective sales team meeting requires preparation and structure. An agenda should be formalized and distributed to attendees before each session so they will know what to expect and can prepare any items for contribution. During the meeting, the sales manager should introduce each agenda item and keep the team from straying off-topic.
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6- Sales team meetings are poorly attended or not taken seriously.
Of course, attendance at sales team meetings can be made mandatory, 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. Ensuring attendance at regular meetings should be no problem if you eliminate the barriers to effective and productive sales team meetings outlined in points 1 to 5. Make an effort to ensure the attendees have fun, interact, learn something valuable and have the opportunity to be heard and contribute.
Kodiak Group offers a playbook-driven approach to equip managers to be influential leaders. Components include a customized Cadence of Meetings, Meetings Agendas, Best Practices, and skill development sessions for leading meetings and coaching teams. For individuals who prefer the convenience of online training, courses such as Managing Sales Team Meetings are also available via Kodiak Group’s innovative and versatile E-learning platform.
