Sales meetings are typically held by the sales manager of a company and are attended by the entire team. It is usually attended by sales enablement leaders, sales reps and if necessary, personnel from other departments also.
“The goal of any sales meeting is to discuss the sales process, highlight the changes to be made, and focus on the overall improvement of sales by analyzing the status of potential deals.”
If you are a sales manager, then sales meetings become an integral part of your responsibilities in managing a sales team. These meetings are a treasure trove of information as they offer key insights into your sales funnel, and help to analyze the performance of the sales reps in detail.
However, it is also not very uncommon to see sales meetings revolving around unnecessary and irrelevant aspects of sales and your team. This is where proper planning can help.
There are a few ways to conduct a sales meeting and also ensure that it is actually beneficial. But the key mantra is to keep it short as time is of great essence in this rapidly transforming world. Keeping the meetings anywhere between 15-30 minutes is ideal, especially in the present scenario where most of the meetings are virtual and there are high chances that your team’s attention might wane off if you stretch it for a long. The first step is to set an agenda.
Why set an agenda for your sales meeting?
Without a well-defined agenda, these are some of the common problems you will end up facing in a sales meeting -
- Meetings can become repetitive and boring. You and your team will get stuck in a rut which can lower morale and reduce the involvement of the team.
- Meetings can lack active engagement making them completely pointless. It can lead to distracted attendees and divided attention.
- It will make your sales meetings one-sided; the focus will be lost completely and the problems to be solved will be left hanging.
- You will end up putting pressure on your team to meet goals without listening to their inputs. This can result in demoralization and a lack of interest.
- Excessively long meetings can result in missing out on key points to be discussed.
All these problems can be overcome by setting a sales meeting agenda. It keeps the goals at the forefront, while also setting time aside to listen to the feedback of the sales team. An agenda consists of two important factors. The topics to be covered in the meeting and the flow of the meeting.
Topics to be covered in the sales meeting
Depending on specific circumstances, there might be different topics to discuss at every meeting. There are, however, a few subjects which must be covered in every sales meeting agenda to ensure productivity and improve the outcome of it -
- The sales pipeline: Get quick updates on the status of sales from sales leaders or individual sales reps. This is essential to ensure the company is meeting targets.
Rafiki can help you with this by providing insights as to what the key deal risks or roadblocks were and what topics were discussed that could impact your pipeline from every sales call of a rep.
- Roadblocks and obstacles: Discuss the issues facing sales reps while attempting to close a deal. Are the same difficulties spread across the team? What part of the sales call triggered deal risk?
These questions are easily answered by Rafiki with AI-based transcriptions highlighting the necessary topics of conversation related to objections and deal risks.
- Metrics, metrics, metrics: Focus on the analytics. These are real numbers that show the rate of closing deals, the reps who are most successful, and what makes them successful.
Along with your CRM, Rafiki can make analyzing metrics at sales meetings easy. By collating data from every call, it can display metrics about an individual's performance.
- Goals and targets: Every sales meeting should have time dedicated to placing the goals and targets on the table. This includes team goals, individual goals, and organizational goals. By getting clarification on every goal, the attendee can leave the meeting with a sense of purpose and clarity.
The flow of the sales meeting
Most sales meeting agendas involve establishing a structure for the duration of the meeting. Crafting the flow will not only make the meeting efficient but also ensures that the meeting adheres to the time limits while covering all bases. Here is the flow of a typical sale meeting that you can replicate in your organization -
- Organizational brief: Provide key updates and developments within the organization which directly impact the sales team and its goals and performance.
- Review: Listen to feedback from the sales leaders and reps to gain insight into the problems faced during the week/month. Provide solutions or open up the floor to others who might have faced similar issues and overcome them.
- Success sharing: Celebrate the small wins within the team. It could be a difficult customer who has been successfully won over by a sales rep, a new record for a number of deals, or even the first deal by a new employee. It is key to spend some time identifying and amplifying these wins. It boosts morale and motivates the team to work better.
- Hear out suggestions: Set a few minutes apart to hear suggestions on how to work better as a team. This makes every individual at the meeting feel heard. It is also a great way to hear innovative ideas which can help everyone at the meeting and even the organization as a whole.
- What next? : End the sales meeting with clear and achievable targets. Provide useful information which can be used to improve performance and end on a positive note.
Minutes of the meeting
The minutes of the sales meeting is usually taken by a designated team member or taken by different members on a rotation basis. However, ensure that it is not overlooked. For a sales meeting, use a combination of the 3 below types -
- Action minutes: This includes the final actions or decisions taken to solve any problems or roadblocks discussed in the meeting.
- Discussion minutes: This provides detailed insights into the points of conversation preceding the decision-making process.
- Verbatim minutes: This usually includes stats or key points of note which are transcribed in their entirety exactly as spoken.
At the end of the meeting, a copy of the minutes is sent to everyone who attended. This is a record of the happenings. It keeps the key aspects of the meeting at the forefront of the mind and allows everyone to refresh their understanding of the various topics of discussion. It also acts as a refresher before the next sales meeting.
You can also use Rafiki to transcribe your internal meetings, intelligently segment the conversations into key points and convert them into comprehensive minutes of meetings. This means you do not have to assign a team member to take notes anymore. They can contribute to the meeting in better ways.
How does Rafiki help run effective sales meetings in 20 minutes?
Rafiki brings all the stats and data-related sales calls to one seamless platform. This helps analyze and draw conclusions from the overall performance of the sales team in advance of the actual sales meeting.
This makes it easy to highlight the steps to improve sales strategy during meetings without needless conversation or excessive speculation. With Rafiki, there is no need to rely on anecdotal success stories anymore. The real ones and what makes them deal closers are all out in the open, making it easy for every sales rep to emulate.
Leading your sales team to greater heights has never been easier. Book a demo with Rafiki to know more.
