This is Part 3 in our Maximize Customer Meetings Series.  This Friday, March 19th, the third agenda in the series goes out to subscribers.  The 3 part series will soon be available on our store, also.  To get weekly sales team meeting exercises that cover this and many more selling topics, subscribe to Meeting to Win today. 

You’ve followed the steps to prepare and execute a productive customer meeting.  You’re not done yet!  To maximize the work done on this customer meeting so far, it is helpful to send comprehensive and organized Meeting Notes after the meeting.  This is where many sales professionals quit.  Following up thoroughly is a great way to gain a competitive edge in a sales cycle.

Get started the day of your customer meeting.

• Typically, sales representatives will send a quick thank you note via email to the customer. 
• In that short thank you e-mail, let the customer know you will send them more comprehensive Meeting Notes to outline everything discussed and agreed upon along with a timeline of next steps.

 This action gives the customer some ownership in this process immediately following the meeting and sets you both up to accomplish something, therefore, maximizing your meeting. 

Within 48 hours send your Meeting Notes.  Meeting Notes should include:

1. A bulleted list of the information the sales representative learned about the customer’s needs.
2. A list of action items for both the sales rep and the customer along with time lines.
3. A couple of bullets with high-level ideas on possible solutions you discussed while meeting.
4. Possible pricing scenarios (if discussed in meeting).
5. Call to action. At this point, let the customer know what to expect next.  For example, “we will contact your administrative assistant to set up a time for you to tour our plant”.

 Benefits of using Meeting Notes after a customer meeting:

• By outlining this in writing post-meeting the customer has the opportunity to correct any wrong or missing information. This is critically important for the sales representative who is formulating a solution.
• This demonstrates to the customer that the sales representative has a clear understanding of the needs which builds confidence and trust and ultimately rapport.
• Customer is agreeing to next steps and is sharing in the ownership of finding a solution.
• Often customers use these Meeting Notes internally to share progress on finding a solution or to report to senior leaders.  This builds your good reputation with more of your customer’s leadership, saves them work and demonstrates that you have their best interests in mind.
• Clear communication along the way is critically important when problems or misunderstandings arise in sales cycles.  The relationship built along the way can make or break a sales as it gets closer to closing.

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

• Ask the team to come prepared to discuss a recent customer meeting that resulted in next steps.
• As a team, write your Meeting Notes and share them with the group.
• Provide feedback for each other on appearance, communication style and ease of use.
• To get more in depth sales training exercises and practice on this topic, subscribe for Meeting to Win sales team meeting agendas here.

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We write this blog to help improve the sales performance of our readers and subscribers.  Answer this one question to keep us focused on your needs: 

What is one selling activity your team could do more effectively that …read the rest and share your answer here.

Look for ideas based on your answers in the coming posts.  Thank you from the Meeting to Win team.

(We are continuing with our Meeting to Win 3-week sales team meeting agenda series, Maxmize Customer Meetings.  We invited a friend of Meeting to Win, Kathleen Steffey, CEO and Founder of Naviga Business Services  to share some great advice for the before the meeting in Don’t Wing It.)

Don’t Wing It

by Kathleen Steffey, CEO/Founder of Naviga Business Services

Quiz time:  What are the five biggest challenges your prospects and clients are dealing with and how does your solution address them?

 If you can’t answer that question, you need to hit the books. How can you possibly position your solution as a way to relieve your prospect’s pain if you don’t understand the source of their discomfort?

A solid working knowledge of industry issues lets you anticipate the most common objections and develop standard responses that overcome them. It lets you develop a standard list of leading questions that shift the focus from the prospect’s concern about spending money to the return they will realize from their investment into your solution.

 It keeps you in control of the sales process and helps you establish a rapport and build a foundation of trust.

 Is your client’s industry faced with a talent shortage? If so, how does your solution help the prospect function effectively with fewer people, or raise their profile so they can better-compete for top professionals?

 Is the economic downturn causing belt-tightening? If so, how does your solution help lower production costs, reduce overhead or improve productivity?

 Top sales professionals make time to keep up on the industries they serve. They read the top trade journals, find the blogs and online sites that cover their business and industry. They listen to what their clients are saying.

 Follow their lead. Use the information you glean from these sources to develop a library of standard responses and questions. Practice them until you know them cold.

 Now you’re ready to respond to whatever objection your prospects throw at you so you can lead them down the path to a value-based sale.

(Meeting to Win thanks Kathleen for her insights in Don’t Wing It.  To get weekly sales team meeting agendas on Maxmizing Customer Meetings and many other sales performance topics, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas today.  We look forward to working with you.)

Enjoy a sales meeting agenda idea for your next sales meeting.

Ask your team to dust off (literally) the sales training manual from your latest sales training session.  Assign each person on the team one section and ask them to lead the team in the exercises, role plays and discussions from the training session over the course of the next few sales team meetings.  This will reinforce the training you’ve already received and give the team a chance to practice the new skills. 

Start each meeting with an update from each person regarding how they used the previous week’s lesson in the field and the outcome of that effort.

Enjoy your sales meetings while building your sales skills.

(To get new sales meeting agendas each week, join Meeting to Win.  We provide energizing, fun sales team meeting agendas for motivating sales meetings.)

We are in the middle of our Maximizing Customer Meetings Sales Team Meeting Agenda series.  To enhance the series, we’ve called on some top selling experts to share their strategies for maximizing customer meetings.  This post is brought to us by Mary Donato, President at Applied Principles, a sales and marketing professional services firm that helps Fortune 1000 companies achieve sales and marketing excellence.

(To subscribe to receive weekly sales team meeting agendas like Maximizing Customer Meetings, visit us HERE.)

Pre-Call Planning for Success

By Mary Donato

Every salesperson would like to have more appointments with more decision-makers. The reality is, these are relatively rare events—particularly with regard to the C-suite.

So once you do get that all-important meeting set up, how much time do you spend preparing for it? The majority of sales calls are won or lost before the salesperson even steps into the client’s office. This is due to the amount of time spent planning for the call. Pre-call planning is one of the most critical steps before any important client meeting. It can take 15 minutes, or even days, depending upon the complexity and importance of the business to your company and goals.

In spite of its critical importance, pre-call planning is a relatively simple endeavor. Here are six steps to incorporate into your own planning process:

Read the rest…

(To get a 60-Minute Sales Team Meeting Agenda on Objection Strategy with Role Plays, visit our STORE.)

As salespeople, we hear objections, pushbacks and questions during a sales cycle.  Our goal must always be to provide our customers with the best possible solutions to get them the results they desire.  With that in mind, it is our responsibility to effectively address objections and pushbacks.  By “effectively address”, I mean that we need to be prepared for our most common questions or objections and make sure we understand what is driving the concern.  We must get to the real need or issue that the objection is raising.  Only when we thoroughly address issues can the customer make the best possible decision about what is best for their company.

To do this, a salesperson must first identify all the objections they hear.  It is helpful to list these by stage of the sales cycle.  For example, create a chart that lists the steps in your sales cycle from suspect to negotiation and then list the objections you typically hear at each stage of the sales cycle.

Then, based on the stage of the sales cycle, determine why they may have that objection, concern or question.  What might be driving that concern or objection (they are afraid the solution costs too much, they work with your competitor already, they really don’t have authority to take it any further, etc).

Then, determine the best way to learn the reason behind the objection.  What questions will you ask?  How will you communicate in a way that does not cause the customer to become defensive?  How can you open them up to share their thoughts behind the concern?

Now, that you have gone through this exercise for each objection you hear, you are prepared for the next time those objections arise – and you know they will.  You’ll actually look forward to addressing these objections as an important part of helping your customer make great decisions for them and their company.  In many cases, you’ll be able to address the objection before they even raise it.

Being prepared to help our customers is our responsibility as sales professionals.  So, we know we get objections and pushbacks. There is no excuse for not being prepared for them.

Look forward to objections this week!

(To download the Objection Strategy & Role Plays Sales Team Meeting Agenda, visit our STORE here.  This 60-Minute Sales Team Meeting Agenda will leave your sales team with a strategy for handling your most common objections leaving them more equipped to win that very day.)

We at Meeting to Win are big fans of Paul Castain and his work.  During our 3-week Sales Team Meeting Agenda series on Maximizing Customer Meetings we thought you may enjoy Paul’s thougths on starting your meetings with impact. 

Starting Your Meetings with Impact

by Paul Castain of Sales Playbook

OK, pop quiz. How long does it take to make an impression on someone? 30 seconds? 10? Less? …
Here’s something that you can do in your very next client/prospect meeting …

Read the rest here.

(This Friday Meeting to Win continues a 3-week series called Maximize Customer Meetings – Before, During and After.  To join us, subscribe here.)

To get this blog’s new posts emailed to you every Monday morning , Subscribe to our blog.

As we discussed in our recent post, Maximize Customer Meetings, Part 1: Before the Meeting, customer meetings are the goal of most of our sales activity. Those meetings launch sales cycles, move deals along and turn opportunities into signed deals.  It makes sense that we spend time preparing for these and executing them effectively.

We’ve already discussed best practices before the customer meeting.  After years of trial and error, here are a few practices I’ve used during customer meetings to maximize this limited and valuable time with a customer.

• Typically, you only have 30 minutes with a customer – longer if you are later in the sales cycle… maybe.  I don’t waste a lot of time on “rapport building”.  It is in my best interest to get down to business.  I’ve never been into forced friendships anyway.  I think real relationships just take time to develop no matter how hard you push them.  So, there is nothing wrong with jumping right in and getting to business.  The rapport gets built as you work together and build trust in each other.  It takes time, but it’s more genuine.
• To start off the meeting, I use a pre-planned, pre-rehearsed opening statement to remind them about the good reason they decided to meet with me. I take them through the goal of our meeting and the agenda, both of which I sent before our meeting.  I ask if they agree with the plan for our meeting and if they have anything topics they’d like to add to our agenda. 
• Throughout the meeting I keep us on track with time checks, marking items off our list and setting next steps.
• I leave about 5 minutes at the end to recap our meeting and action items (this will be covered again in Part 3 of Maximize Customer Meetings).
• I set our next meeting or conversation based on our action items.

Customers appreciate it when we use their time wisely.  It is nice to invest 30-60 minutes and see real, tangible outcomes.

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

• Ask your team to come to the next sales team conference call with information about 2 upcoming customer meetings. 
• During this meeting, create opening scripts to use to set the tone for a productive meeting that makes helps maximize the time together.
• Rehearse these scripts during the meeting and give each other feedback.
• Assign a Fieldwork Assignment.  Ask each rep to use their opening script in those two upcoming meetings and report back to the team on the productivity of the meeting.

Next week we’ll discuss Part 3, After the Meeting.  Have a great selling week.

(For more indepth sales team meeting training exercises on topics like this one and many others, subscribe to Meeting to Win.  Each week, Sales Managers receive a new 60-minute agenda full of training, exercises, discussion topics and practice drills.  Teams can leave their Monday Morning Meetings motivated and equipped.  Join us here.)

Great weekly sales team meetings can be powerful Sales Performance Engines.  Is yours?  If not, there might be a quick fix to take your team to higher and higher heights. 

Take the assessment to determine if there is room to improve your weekly sales team meeting. 

Sales Team Meeting Assessment:  Is There Room for Improvement in Your Weekly Sales Team Meetings?

1.  My team would join my weekly sales team meeting if attendance was optional.

(A)  Yes

(B)   No

2.  I, the Sales Manager, am talking more than 50% of the meeting time.

(A)  Less than 50% – Others are talking the other 50%

(B)   Yes, I do most of the talking.

3.  We set a clear goal for our sales team meetings and leave knowing if we accomplished that goal or not?

(A) Yes, our meetings have a purpose and a clear goal.

(B)  No, our meetings do not have a clear objective.

4.  In our sales team meetings, everyone is expected to contribute and actively participate?

(A) Yes.  Our sales team meetings are a team effort.  We see it as everyone’s resposibility to use this time wisely.

(B)  No, sometimes I think people are checking email during the meeting.

5.  Everyone leaves each meeting with a new idea to try or a new skill to practice in the field that week.

(A) Yes, our meetings equip our teams to sell more that very week.

(B)  No.  We usually just go over numbers and hear what everyone accomplished last week.

6.  My sales team meeting agenda is sent in advance so everyone can prepare for a great meeting.

(A)  Yes.

(B)  We do not have an agenda and, if we do, it is not sent in advance.

7.  My sales team meeting topics

(A) Are relevant to our current selling environment – challenges, initiatives and goals.

(B) Are the same every week.

8.  My sales team would say our weekly sales team meeting is a great use of their time.

(A) Yes!

(B)  Probably not.  I’d be afraid to ask.

9.  My team ties successes in the field to something they learned during a sales team meeting.

(A)  Yes, often.

(B)  Rarely if ever.

If you find yourself marking (B) to any of the above questions, there is probably room for improvement in the way you execute your sales team meetings.  This blog lists many resources -articles and tools – to improve your sales team meetings.   Of course, Meeting to Win is happy to help, also.  Contact us to set up a consultation.  We’ll be happy to provide some guidance and point you to the tools available to begin using your sales meetings as sales engines.

(This post brought to you by sales team meeting expert, Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win.  Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting agendas and best practices to turn your sales team meetings into sales performance engines. Join us by subscribing here.)

We are packaging our posts and sending them once per week to subscribers each Monday morning.  To get your Meeting to Win Posts every Monday, subscribe now.

In most cases, we see an official “performance plan” as the beginning of the end for some poor sales rep.  The performance plan seems to be more of a termination plan as the evidence suggests that the goal is often not better performance, but instead a way to begin documentation to justify termination.  In every case where I’ve seen someone put on a performance plan, that was their cue to start a full court press job search before they were fired.   

So, it’s safe to say that no sales rep wants to be put on a performance plan, right?  Right!

If you are a sales rep facing underperformance, my guess is that you are worried about your job.  You might be hoping no one has noticed, you might spend your time sharing the positive news while keeping everyone’s focus off the negative performance, you might be explaining away your bad sales (customer budget cuts, etc) or.. you might even be job hunting.

Here is something to try instead.  Put yourself on a Performance Plan.   This is a Turnaround Boot Camp style Performance Plan by the way. 

We know that we can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. That really is the premise of a Performance Plan. 

To get started:

• Look at what you have been doing and critically analyze exactly how you are spending your time to determine what is producing results and what is not. 
• Consult with team members who are exceeding goals for advice on what you could be doing differently. 
• Once you determine which of your sales activities are producing positive sales results, triple your output of those activities.
• Figure out where you are investing time in non-selling activities (learning a new CRM, sitting on an internal committee, etc) and eliminate those activities from your week. You can politely request to be excused – if you get fired, none of those things will really matter anyway.
• Start your day earlier and end your day later.
• Look the part. 
• Exercise, eat right and get enough sleep.
• Write out your 30 day plan.  This should include day by day what you will be doing and with which customers or prospects.  For example, maybe every day starts with 50 cold calls, maybe Sundays are research days, Tues-Thurs is for 15 face-to-face appointments, etc. 
• Have an accountability plan in place – a report, updates in your CRM or something to monitor your progress.
• Have a clear goal for the end of 30 days and a way to monitor progress along the way.

Now, here’s key element:

Request a meeting with your Sales Manager – NOT during selling hours (you need those).  Have an early coffee or after hours meeting with your Sales Manager to let them know you have put yourself on a Performance Plan, walk them through it and get their input to fine tune it and gain agreement on your course of action. 

By proactively addressing your underperformance with your Sales Manager you will open the doors of communication regarding expectations and possible outcomes of underperformance.  You will show the initiative to address the problem proactively giving your Sales Manager an opportunity to help you succeed instead of look for a way to manage you out.  

Too often we keep moving along hoping no one will bring up the issue everyone knows exists (we do this with customers, too).  If you know you are underperforming, your sales manager knows it, too.  His boss will ask him about it and it will eventually be dealt with.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could change the story by being brave enough to call it out and proactively do something about it? 

So, if you find yourself falling short, stop worrying and start acting.  Build you plan ASAP and start executing with your Sales Manager’s support.

Put yourself on a Performance Plan today.

(Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, CEO of Meeting to Win.   Meeting to Win provides sales team meeting topics for Sales Managers who want to run sales team meetings that aren’t a bore.  Inspire your team with Meeting to Win.  Subscribe here.)