Delayed gratification has been defined as the ability to put in the work to earn the reward.
Sales managers teach and preach the importance of precall planning and preparation to their sales teams in order to conduct effective sales meetings. Sales managers coach their salespeople to have a defined purpose and objective for the meeting, with which the prospect and salesperson are aligned.
All this great advice requires up-front work and delayed gratification skills to avoid running wing-it sales meetings. Without investing time, salespeople end up wasting time and money conducting transactional sales meetings rather than value sales meetings. But…………..
How many sales managers apply this same sales sermon to themselves when preparing for their biweekly or monthly group sales meetings?
The answer: Not enough. When preparing for your next group sales meeting, ask yourself the following questions:
- What is the purpose and objective of this meeting?
- What is my desired outcome?
- Does my sales team know the above objectives?
- What resources do I need to bring or develop to make this a highly successful meeting?
- What is the cost of running this sales meeting and how will I measure the ROI? (There is a lot of payroll in the room or on the phone.)
Run your group sales meetings like a sales meeting!
For example, if the purpose and objective of the sales meeting is skill development, a sales manager must decide which skill is most important for development. Does your sales team need more help on crafting value propositions to open up better sales conversations? Or do they need to learn better questions to quantify the cost of a prospect’s business problem in order to avoid looking like a commodity?
Avoid the pull of instant gratification and put in the work to design and run an effective sales meeting.
A group sales meeting focused on skill development requires case study and role-play preparation. Without such preparation, your practice sets and role-plays look and sound like, “Now, who is the prospect? What am I supposed to observe? Where are we in the sales process?” The outcome is a frustrated sales team that feels like it just wasted time in “another one of those meetings.”
Think of any great coach. They don’t show up to practice without a specific agenda of what they hope to accomplish, whether it’s music or athletics.
Wing-it sales meetings don’t gain new customers. And wing-it group sales meetings don’t help your sales team gain new skills and knowledge.
Sales managers, avoid the pull of instant gratification and put in the work required to run effective sales meetings.
Good Selling!
Join SalesLeadership Oct 8-9 in Littleton, CO for our Take the Lead Sales Management 2-day workshop. We are the coach’s coach! Click here for more info or call 303-708-1128 for more information. Enroll today!
