Staff Management Tips

Ah, the dreaded once a week sales meeting. Usually a once a week ritual in most sales oriented companies whether retail, indirect sales or direct sales its always a must have. I have never known a manager who loved to have these meetings with their staff every week. They usually saw them as ritualistic requirements imposed on them by upper management and their sales staff. If you have that attitude, then that really sucks! I’m probably one of only a few managers that really enjoyed taking these meetings on a weekly or when needed, bi-weekly basis. Maybe if you don’t like taking them, you might find some helpful ideas on how to turn your weekly sales meetings into a more enjoyable experience for you but more importantly, for you sales staff.

First of all, what should be discussed at these meetings? All the obvious things for a start like sales techniques, sales processes, how you are tracking for the month as a team. Also sales planning as in how you are going to achieve your goals for the month is an important matter and lastly, miscellaneous matters that came up the week before.

I remember years ago on the odd occasion someone else took the sale meetings for me. My manager insisted on this because he wanted to train this new guy to take over from me one day when I moved up in the company. The thing was that he hated taking these meetings. I asked him why one day over coffee and he said it’s because he could never think of what to say. In other words, he wasn’t prepared.  When the staff saw that he was taking the meeting that week, you could see it in their expressions that they were already gone. He just rambled on and on about nothing. He had no direction and just blurted out orders and said they had to do what he said. I sat in the corner and cringed and sometimes when I saw people were getting a little angry, I jumped in and took over. He was so demotivating that some left the meeting very flat.

Preparation is the key to a successful sales meeting. You need to know what to talk about and how you are going to present it. It’s not as difficult as you think it is. Our meetings were on a Monday morning at 8am so that gave me the weekend to think about things. I just basically started off by saying what a great team it was and thanked everyone for their contribution for the past week. I outlined how we were tracking for the month, our highs and our lows and asked for suggestions on how we are going to meet our target for that week. I got them involved and you would be surprised at what ideas came out when everyone felt their input was worthwhile.

Sometimes I would ask someone from upper management to do a sort of guest speaker role and the topics were usually how the company was tracking so that it made the team feel that they were appreciated ‘from above’. Once a month or so we would have our breakfast meeting at McDonalds or somewhere like that where they have a small private area and that usually went down really well. Other times we would have fresh muffins and take away coffees brought in from the deli. It made it a far more enjoyable experience for everyone. Lastly we would cover any issues anyone had that could be relevant to other staff members and left the floor open for discussion. But, I was always in charge of where the meeting was heading. If it was going off on a tangent, I’d bring it back on topic. Sometimes people would thank me for an interesting and inspiring meeting which made me feel good about it.

The weekly sales meeting need not be a drudgery as some make it out to be. If you put a bit of effort into it and cover the topics that need covering and be positive even when things aren’t going on target, you will find you have a far more motivated team than if you go in there and blast them to kingdom come for doing such a crap job the week before (as the guy I told you about earlier used to do). Be prepared and enthusiastic and watch your teams enthusiasm sore with yours at the end of the meeting.

Tags: sales, sales meeting, sales planning, sales team, sales tecniques, sales training, successful sales meeting, successful sales meetings, weekly sales meetings