Traits of Top Salespeople

"Top salespeople are proactive: they take the initiative rather than waiting for things to happen."

Tag: meetings

Some Advice On How To Not Suck At Meetings

Some Advice On How To Not Suck At Meetings

Meetings for salespeople are common…and terrible.

Salespeople have a staggering amount of meetings to attend, both internally and externally.

When they’re not checking in with their managers or picking up tips from their coaches, they’re presenting to prospects or visiting with customers. With all that time tied up in meetings, it’s critical that each runs as smoothly as possible.

In a perfect world, every meeting would have a well-defined agenda and result in clear and actionable takeaways. But as anyone who’s been in any sort of meeting knows, this isn’t the case. As the following infographic from SalesCrunch shows, the sad truth for salespeople is that meetings can be more of a time suck than hours well spent.

When a weekly sales meeting is broken down into the associated cost per attendee, the average check-in can boast a price tag of $350 per hour. And the number climbs as the level of seniority rises — a senior management meeting costs a whopping $1100 per hour. This price skyrockets if you divide the combined quotas in the meeting divided by 2,000 (the number of working hours in a day) times the length of the meeting.

For example, if you have six people in the meeting and they they have a combined quota of 10 million dollars, that is $5,000 per hour! With that cost in mind, let’s agree that meetings with salespeople better not suck!

The following infographic comes from Visually.

Header Photo by StartupStockPhotos (Pixabay)

Do’s And Don’ts For Your Sales Kickoff

Do’s And Don’ts For Your Sales Kickoff

I am a big fan of Sales For Life, so when I read their recent article on sales kickoff planning, I had to mention it here. This is the time of year when many companies are starting to plan their next sales kickoff (SKO).

You would think that companies could do this well, but the statistics show that success is far from easy. Many companies may be falling short, according to BrainShark’s State of Sales Kickoff Meetings survey. Despite billions of dollars spent on these events annually (not to mention hours upon hours of preparation), three out of four attendees (74%) say their company’s SKO doesn’t merit an “A” grade, with 29% rating it a “C” grade or below – leaving ample room for improvement.

Jaime Shanks of Sales For Life creates some great Do’s and Don’ts. Here are my favorites:

Do

  • Bring clients in to share why and how they bought. Let your sales team understand what it’s like to be in your customers’ shoes. Have them share their buying journey.
  • Get the skills part of your training early in the event – tired minds don’t absorb. You don’t have to use this time for product training as it’s the easiest for reps to get a hold of that information. Try focusing on skills development early in your SKO and then product training.
  • Make your event fun and gamified. You already know sales reps are competitive so bring them competition and fun.
  • The most successful companies we’ve observed have made their SKO a business function with a celebration wrapped around it and not a celebration with a little business wrapped around it.
  • Set clear expectations around attendance and consequences for non-attendance or non-participation.

Don’t

  • Don’t try to do too many activities – focus is the key. Focus on tying everything back to the main company goals and objectives for the year.
  • Don’t focus so much on product training. You have all year and all the support in the world to disseminate that information. Use this time to teach new selling skills like courses in social selling mastery, digital sales, ABSD, storyboarding, video selling, objection handling, effective sales research and so much more that doesn’t involve product knowledge.
  • Don’t have leaders and reps in different sessions. This is the perfect time for each to gain new perspectives and learnings from each other. Being on the same page should be a part of your theme.
  • Don’t accept latecomers who slept in because of a difficult night the night before. Your company may have invested millions so treat it that way.

Header Photo by Editor B