I have been to a lot of sales meetings in my career, which have ranged from cheerleading sessions with less substance than a reality TV show to bloodbaths with outrageous demands and an environment so thick with tension and pressure everyone couldn’t wait to get back to their desk to start looking for a new job. Whether you conduct weekly, monthly or quarterly sales meetings, the goal should be to inspire, motivate and coach a team towards success. Here are some rules to run an effective high quality sales meeting:

  1. Determine your goal. What do you want to communicate? What do you want to achieve? Every meeting should establish the organization’s current position and identify the direction in which you intend to proceed. It’s important to have a clear agenda so that each meeting provides clarity and substance and feels valuable so that those in the meeting feel valued.
  2. Be honest about goals and give people concrete tools to meet expectations. I’ve been to meetings where the goals might as well have been to grow an inch taller – that’s how absurd they were. It’s critical to set realistic goals and provide the tools to achieve those goals or you’re setting everyone up for failure. Goals are also not a secret. Individual and organizational revenue goals should be visible at all times so that everyone understands what is being measured and what is expected.
  3. Recognition is important. Do acknowledge good work and celebrate the wins. Don’t lump everyone together by making statements like, “WE all need to …” You will lose the respect of your top performers and your underperformers will assume that it’s a company problem rather than an individual challenge. Strong leaders recognize and reward excellent performance and coach underperformers to greater success.
  4. Identify what is working and create a solution driven culture. No one needs the obvious stated. Create a safe space to brainstorm and innovate.
  5. Don’t allow meetings to deteriorate into whining sessions. Acknowledge frustration, but don’t dwell in negativity. Success is never found in an environment of negativity and impossibility. If everyone believes something is impossible – then they’re right! It’s that simple.
  6. Create a system of accountability. Be sure to assign people to post- meeting tasks and set up deadlines and follow up system to ensure that the tasks are executed. All work is as good as the follow up.
  7. Stay on task and on time. Set the expectation that meetings begin and end on time. This will set a standard for excellence and set an expectation that time is valued currency and should be spent wisely.
  8. Run meetings with respect and professionalism. Eliminate charged language, rudeness and gossip, even if it’s about the competition. Time should be spent building not tearing down. It’s a poor model for success.
  9. Have a professional development component. Increase performance and confidence by teaching and coaching. Professional development never ends. We are all capable of learning and improving our performance if we so choose.
  10. Include support staff. A strong sales culture includes those who support the sales team. Every member of the organization plays an important role in revenue generation and their contributions must be valued and their skills must be developed. Consider including support staff in some portion of your sales meeting depending upon your model.