The purpose of a “Sales Meeting” is to increase sales. 
That should be self-explanatory; however sales
meetings (in common with most “meetings”) consistently
fall flat and are perceived as boring lectures which lack any
clarity or purpose. Making every sales meeting interesting,
informative and useful will lead to increased productivity
and hopefully more sales.
Consider these tips before calling your next sales meeting:
Prepare Refreshments
Preparing refreshments for your sales team helps set the right atmosphere and is particularly beneficial
if you have called the meeting for early in the morning. Coffee, orange juice, fruit and snacks will set a
great tone for the meeting and relax the participants.
Stick to an Agenda
Like any business activity, proper planning will really help sales meetings become a success. Make sure
you prepare an agenda beforehand and list the areas you wish to cover as “Objectives”. Distribute
this to all team members prior to the meeting. This will help keep the meeting relevant, improve time-
management and help when it comes to assessing how successful the meeting actually was.
Recognise Good Performance
At the start of the meeting, take a few minutes to recognize your sales teams recent achievements
like hitting sales targets, making large sales, gaining new clients, etc, etc. This provides positive re-
enforcement and encouragement and also starts the meeting off in a positive way.
Share Anecdotes
Sharing amusing and fun sales anecdotes will also help keep the mood light, keep people entertained
and strengthen team bonds.
Invite Team Sharing
Ask your sale team to prepare examples of the following to share with the group:
- How they made initial contact with a new client
- If there were any competitors for the sale
- What obstacles had to be overcome
- What worked and what didn’t
- If a fellow team member helped in any way
The sales team is a collective resource. Pooling experiences and discussing what worked and what did
not gets individual team members actively involved in the meeting. You can also ask the sales team to
prepare hypothetical sale mistakes for discussion as well.
Use Inspirational Guests
Inviting a regular customer in to discuss their purchasing experience or things they would like to see
improve can provide instructive and realistic feedback for your sales team. It will also provide relevant
subject matter for future meetings. Inviting successful sales colleagues from other areas of your
business or even unrelated businesses can be inspirational too.
Keep it Positive & Relevant
Sales team meetings provide a great forum to discuss issues concerning the whole team. Individual
concerns (particularly of a personal nature) should not be addressed unless the individual is sharing the
resolution to a problem. Keeping the meeting relevant will help keep the participants interested and it
allows the group to work on resolving problems and issues that directly affect them.
Remain Flexible
Try to remember there is no one “Correct Way” to do anything in business, particularly when it comes
to managing people. You might find it useful to correlate sales data to weekly sales meeting “objectives”
to discover how successful your meetings are. If not, make small changes that you can easily track to
ascertain their impact.
Ask for Feedback
Asking for feedback from the sales team will help your meetings become more successful and (all other
things remaining equal) help sales grow.