Sales Meetings - High Fives or One-on-One's?

The sales meeting. Loved by some, hated by many.

Making a success of a meeting with often many different characters is a challenge at the best of times for a Sales Manager but like it or not, sales meetings are an essential part of the working life of a sales team.

I have seen every method of scheduling possible from the MD who considered it vital to have a meeting at 9am each day with the sales team to "get them set up for the day" through to business owners that considered a chat over a cigarette next to the trash at the back of the building as being a meeting!

It is natural that some people will work well in a team and thrive from competition and some will have no interest in being part of a team and will simply be interested in earning money and having to do with any of their colleagues. Some Sales Managers like the big energy, high-fives and I even experienced one who literally through a leather gauntlet onto the meeting table and shouted "which of you is brave enough to pick that up?" he was met with silence.

I often found that the geographical location of the team made a big difference to the effectiveness of a meeting. If people needed to drive 200 miles to get to the meeting then it was never a good thing to ask for their attendance at 8am. With national sales teams I have always insisted that we rotated around the home towns of all attendees and they would then be responsible for selecting a venue for lunch.

With such a strong mix of characters and ego's there will never be a perfect meeting, what appeals to some will bore others and this is why a mix is good and the meetings should not be too long. I have learned over the years that the strongest teams are built through socialising together and not sitting around a meeting table discussing targets.

There is of course a need to talk about business but this can be fitted in during the course of the time together. I always used to meet with my teams once a month and never on a Monday or Friday. We would meet at around 10am for a meeting and there would always be a plentiful supply of pastries and hot drinks on arrival and then I would allow the first half hour or so to let the team catch up with each other and enjoy a chat together. When we would get down to business I would start with a very quick review of the previous months performance as a team with attention only focused on the top performers and not the people that didn't meet their targets.

After talking for around an hour about other issues and new products etc I would take the team out for lunch and I would then use this time for chats around the table about new business and problems that the team were facing. It is much easier to get the true feelings of the team when they are in a relaxed environment and not singled out at a meeting. 

The venue was very important as it needed to have a large table for us all to eat together but I also always made sure there was a standing area nearby as this is where I could talk to people on a one-on-one basis and typically everyone likes to get up from the table and stretch their legs after eating.

Overall I wanted Sales Meetings to be booked only when necessary and to be as relaxed as possible - salespeople need to have their ego's massaged and this should be done both at the meeting in front of their peers and also during a one-on-one chat afterwards.

I would love to know your thoughts or experiences on this topic so please let me know in the comments below.

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