Episode 24: How Successful Sales Teams are Meeting Together Post Covid

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Right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered B2B sales teams. So I'm recording today after my first attempt at mountain bike riding over the weekend. And I have to say I went into the experience thinking that it was going to be much like road cycling. Big mistake. I was out there with a couple of really experienced cyclists. I'm talking national level representatives, professional athletes in their earlier days. So they both were really solid at what they do and I have the utmost respect for how they go about it. But for me, what I really quickly realized was that something can be very similar to what we do day in, day out in life. And I would say riding on a road bike versus a mountain bike, you'd be reasonable to assume that it's pushing pedals, right? And there might be a little bit of difference, but nothing crazy. But when you actually get into it, and the same can be in the business world and when you get into something that is that, that little bit different, wow, you can really be straightened up pretty quickly. And I experienced that through a nice stack early on in the event. And I try to take something out of most things I do in life. But my key takeaway from mountain bike riding that I can relate to the business world is that trying new things is hard. It doesn't matter what it is, in what part of life, it's not easy to actually get out there and try something new. So for me, I commend anyone who in life is pushing themselves to try new things. It's difficult, it doesn't always work. But for those that embrace it, hats off to you, well done and keep going about it. Number two is don't ever underplay the importance of cross skilling. So I'm sitting here thinking that road cycling to Mountain bike cycling would be really easy, but what actually came out of it was I recognized straight away that the terrain is so different and you need to start looking for different things. On the road, you tend to zone out, your eyes, just tend to look forward. But in mountain bike riding, you've got to be looking everywhere. And straight away I realized that for me as an amateur athlete, I've actually got to pay more attention now when I switch to trail running, which is the next part for me. So I'm going to have to start looking around a lot more when I run. And the same can be applied in the business world. When you move from selling to one type of environment in another, you're going to need to be aware of different things and that cross selling will actually be able to help you when you roll into something else. So that's my two or three minutes of digressing into something non business related that we can make business related. But for me, I'm definitely going back mountain bike riding again. And thanks for humoring me while I started there. But let's get into the actual podcast today. And the last two weeks we've had a bit of a change of pace. We had a guest, Mark Stauss, who came in and we followed that conversation over a couple of episodes. Today we're actually rolling back into an internal facing type of podcast where we're gonna talk about meetings, and that's meetings with your sales team. So they're mostly internal meetings. How do we make these really impactful in the post Covid era? We know that post Covid bringing your teams together has got more difficult, certainly bringing them together face to face. But what's also become more difficult is having meetings that are productive because you've got people at home, you've got people in the office, you've got people on the road, and all the distractions in those environments are very different and unique. And it's very difficult as a sales leader, or any leader in general, to actually have all of those distractions removed at the one time. So as a leader conducting meetings, you need to be better than what you were a few years ago. Difficult to grasp at times, because how we conduct meetings wasn't necessarily something that was critical in our roles. But now to get the most out of meetings, I would say is a very important part of being a leader that we need to know. So today we're going to focus on three key meetings that I think are the most important for you to have with your sales team. And when I mean important, these are the three critical ones that I see the best teams that we work with nailing. So we're going to go through what they are and I'm also going to provide some advice on how I've seen teams really effectively use them in the post Covid era. Okay, so there's three types of meetings as I mentioned. Let's get into the first one. This one I suspect will be pretty common to every sales leader. And that's your weekly team updates. Now why have I thrown these in here? Well, first of all, a weekly team update that sends your team out motivated and ready to conquer the week is the most powerful meeting I think you can have. Because a motivated sales team, sales team that's full of confidence, there's nothing more powerful than that. That said, getting your weekly team updates wrong can actually lead to a demotivated sales team and a demotivated sales team. It just flows through everything across the rest of your week. So the Monday morning meetings, this is typically Monday mornings, right? Where you bring the team together and you're going to talk about results. So how you're tracking versus goals, A review of the last week. Really important in these meetings that you're looking at what worked and what didn't work. Great opportunity for your team to be heard. So we want to be making sure that we're letting them contribute and then the key priorities for next week. So what needs to be achieved, what should the team focus on? That type of stuff. Right? So we're looking backwards in terms of results, we're looking backwards in terms of what worked and what didn't work. But we're looking forwards in terms of what we're going to achieve over the next week. One thing I'll say straight away on weekly team updates, far too often I see these used as accountability sessions. So instead of a motivational event where we look at what's worked and what hasn't worked, they're actually an event where sales leaders go, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. And you need to try and get this right. Right. Super demotivating. And actually then can start to, to roll out criticism that ends up being quite personal. So for me, the teams that really nail this and the best format that I've seen out there, I'm going to go through the best format in detail now. So the best format I've seen is as follows. Number one is the meeting starts with non work related topics to bring people into the conversation. Right. You warm up the room. So if that was me today, I would talk about mountain bike riding like I did at the start of this podcast, and then flow around the room and say, hey, who did something a bit different on the weekend? Who got involved in something that they hadn't done previously? Right. And then you start to get active participation in those meetings. So your room's warmed up nice and easy and straightforward. Before I get into the second one, I will just digress a little bit. We're going to talk about exploratory versus decision making discussions in a moment here, and I want to grab this moment to talk about the difference. So exploratory discussions are when we explore something. So, hey, Ben, you went mountain bike riding on the weekend. Tell me how was it? What went well, what didn't go well? And I'll go, I had a stack, I used my front brake too much, I was too slow, I wasn't looking around where I needed to. A decision making discussion is when we actually decide, okay, what are we going to do? So in terms of a mountain biking discussion, we've looked at those. I didn't look around enough. I used my front brake instead of my back brake stack. The next thing we're going to talk about is, okay, so next time I go mountain bike riding, let's make sure I'm using my back brake first. So exploratory versus decision making discussions, really important. And I'm going to get to them into a minute. So back to where we were before. The best formats of weekly meetings that I've seen. Number one, start non work related and draw people into the conversation. Easy. Number two is we start to talk about successes from the last week. So deal wins are easy, sales numbers are easy. Right. We'll look at sales numbers as part of the discussion. But what we want to hear from the room is other things that have gone well, not just around numbers. That builds confidence, that builds momentum, and that builds a team that's really willing to contribute. In this instance, I love it when sales leaders are praising specifically, hey, well done, Simone. Fantastic week. You nailed that proposal. Great job. Right? So for me, we're talking about numbers, we're talking about successes and what went well. The next part of that meeting is we roll into challenges. So we've got two positive parts of the meeting. What happened over the weekend or the days prior, and successes. This is where we start to talk about the more challenging areas of our week. Right. What hasn't quite gone right. So in this instance, we want to be really careful where we're praising specifically about successes that we're criticizing Generally, or we're being constructive, generally is a better way to put it. So the best meetings that I see here will roll in the issue. So what the issue is. And then you'll start to have an exploratory discussion as to why it went wrong, this happened, that happened, we missed something, a customer didn't return calls, we got our brief wrong, whatever it may be. Right. We will then start to roll in the challenges into what we're going to do about it. Right. So that is your decision making discussion. So we'll go from exploring the challenge to actually making a bit of a decision about what we're going to do about it. If they're a fast loop action, so if it's something that we can correct quickly, really easy to make those decisions then and there in the meeting. Right. So we had a pitch. We didn't win the pitch because we forgot to include some really strong competency about how we deliver the project, or we didn't include enough on the return and investment, or we didn't include enough case studies on previous work. Right. So these are actions that we can change pretty quickly by rolling them into our proposal templates and then executing from here. Stuff that takes a bit longer is when a customer might say, do you know what, I haven't chosen you because you don't have enough experience. Now we need to then work on that over time. So that's going to be harder to make a fast decision on. But certainly when we go through challenges as leaders, the most effective meetings I see are when they can work out what can be sorted now, then and there, or over the next week or two and rolled into the cadence of the sales team. That allows them to continuously improve and they really buy into these weekly meetings. Last but not least on this, leaders will follow up. So they'll have action items that come out of your weekly meetings that they take accountability for and follow up. So just to recap that in your one or so hour weekly sales meeting, we start off with a way to bring people into the conversation so they're ready to talk and they're engaged. The second thing that we'll do is we'll talk about successes, right? And we're praising specifically here. The third thing is challenges, things that haven't gone well over the last week, we brainstorm what they are and then we put in some action items. And last but not least, we actually follow up on those action items. Unbelievably important. Okay, so that is the first meeting, weekly team updates. The second meeting that I See, and to be honest, I see this in every successful sales team that I've ever, ever work with, is they are absolutely disciplined about their training. So the training is set for the same time every single week, and it's normally in the mornings as well. Generally, more people will find it easier to concentrate. It's not a blanket statement because some people do work better at different times of the day, but certainly the most consistent area you can hit is in the morning. So training generally, you see, most teams are running this kind of Tuesdays or Wednesdays early in the day, like I said, and what they have is a calendar of training topics that are published in advance so that their teams know roughly what to expect over the coming periods and they're aligned with their strategic priorities. As they're building this calendar out, they'll generally have kind of one in four sessions spare when they can actually spend some time looking at more urgent or more tactical requirements. For example, something that might come out of the weekly sales meeting that they've had where they need some more training on a topic. Now, by the way, episode 16, I went really deep into training, so I'm just going to talk a little bit further here, but please jump Back to episode 16 if you haven't already. But the training sessions, generally in those meetings, they're broken down into technical skills, so they're technically around what your sales team need to learn. So products, features and benefits, all the skills specifically related to your products. Then they're broken down into sales skills. So things like objection, handling, building, relationships, closing, and last but not least, they're breaking those down into business skills. So these skills are more general in nature. Things like systems, financial metrics, time management, that type of stuff. Now, I do have a resource that's coming out around training and how to build a great training calendar. It's almost ready. It'll be out very, very soon. If you'd like to receive that, please DM me. Get through to me on any of the social media channels and we'll get that back out to you. But for me, the message I'm trying to get across here is that the second of these meetings is all about training sessions and making sure that teams are being trained regularly. Because once they have that training base and they know that it's coming, then their thirst for learning generally will tend to grow. So, in terms of a tip around this, couple of things, number one is try and get your senior team members or your learning and development departments or other types of functions aligned and involved in your sessions. If you can get this done. Not only does it promote the learning of some of your team members, but it also helps you avoid duplicate meetings with other departments across the weeks. It allows you to have meetings on your own terms at your set time without there being a lot of churn onto your sales team's focus. I really like that and I've found most businesses again that we work with will buy into this. Also try and change your modalities, video face to face, off site supplier, technical training, even go to their factories where you can guest presenters. There's lots of different ways that you can be doing training and keep trying to mix that up. And last but not least is just make sure you allow time for workshopping post trainings. Some trainings will be the vast majority will be a session and then you're done. Others will actually need plenty of time for Q and A. So stay on that because that can really impact the quality of your training session. Okay, so first meeting was weekly team meetings. We've gone through that in some detail. Second one was training sessions, making sure they happen every single week. The third one, and this is my absolute favorite, whilst I think that the weekly sales meetings are the most important, deal reviews are where the biggest bang for the buck of any salesperson who invests into it lie. And I'll say that again, deal reviews are where the biggest bang for buck is achieved for any salesperson who engages into it. So what is this jewel in the crown for a high performing B2B team? What it is typically the way I'll generally see a format happen is that it's a focused meeting that really zeroes in on the current pipeline of activity that your sales team is working on. So again, it's normally held in the mornings, generally about an hour to an hour and a half long and typically kind of mid to later in the week. But what it works through is bringing your whole team together to work through your strategically most important or live customer projects that you have in the pipeline. So we're really focused on bringing deals through. It looks at workshopping these projects. So you'll go across the team. You'll often share from person to person. You'll brief a project. So the project might be we are working on a large transport company. The proposal has started two and a half months ago. We've met with all the key decision makers. We haven't been able to get to the CEO yet. We've put a presentation forward. Their communication is they need to make a decision in the next month. We're one of three. And at this stage their communication is that we are right up at the pointy end and a preferred supplier. But I don't know anything further than that. What'll then happen is you go around the room and you share ideas. Someone will say, you need to get in front of the CEO. Someone will ask if you can get some very specific feedback on where we're beating our competition or where we're falling short. Someone else will talk about making sure you get someone to site to see a different type of project or a demonstration for a different type of project so they've got social proof. Someone else will throw in that says, hey, have you rolled Simon into the deal? Because he's really, really talent at working with transport companies. And someone else might throw in, hey, why don't you get the person to call Peter Smith from ABC Transport? Because we've worked with them and they'll give us a terrific referral. Right? So you'll throw those deals around and you tend to workshop them. What then comes out of that is really clear action items for each salesperson. So, hey, here's my deal with the transport company. Here's the three things I'm going to do and I'm going to report back to the group next week. Right? And then when you come back the next week, you'll often pick a smaller number of deals to review on. So the whole idea behind this is we are using the knowledge base of many to help explicitly work on a deal. For one, it's a meeting that works really, really well when you get team participation and engagement, but also when you're consistently holding them. If you can have these meetings all the time, then your teams get ready for what's ahead. It means they bring quality deals to the meeting. It means that they're thinking and they're ready to engage from day one. So a few tips around this. Number one is not everyone is going to engage evenly. You'll find that some people are more passive and some are obviously more outspoken. If you can adjust the input from those that are very outspoken and try and bring others into the meeting by throwing to them specifically first. So instead of Samantha, you might be throwing it to Rebecca. Right? Because Rebecca's a bit quieter and you just hold Samantha there. Hey, Rebecca, I'd love to know exactly what you think about this deal. Right? That's option number one. But option number two is those people that aren't contributing. If you can make sure that they are taking some notes during the session about what they can do to apply to their deals. You don't necessarily need to contribute as heavily or evenly as an individual contributor in these meetings, but we do need to make sure that they are taking the ideas away themselves and being able to apply to them. And actually, while we talk about that, episode 19 was all around fast revenue growth, so it'd be worth jumping back to that because it'll give you some good ideas for those deal review meetings. All right, so that's your third meeting done. So number one is weekly sales meetings, number two is training and number three is weekly deal review meetings. All right, nice and straightforward. But what I will say is it's really, really clear the teams that do these well do these consistently. So a few more tips around effective meetings in this post Covid era and how we can get it right. Number one is those above their team meetings. It's also really important that we're having our individual meetings, our one to ones. Again, it's something I've been very clear with across my career is that one to ones are a weekly event. Occasionally you miss them, but by having them in weekly, you set habits and you build behaviours that people stick to. And it is absolutely crucial for you as a leader to be then having the opportunity to discuss what's come out of the other three meetings, your team meetings, your training and your deal reviews without having to specifically dive deep in those meetings themselves. So it saves an individual from having to have a one to one conversation when they might not be comfortable, but it also buys you time to dive into that. So when we're doing one to ones and we're pairing that with coaching, what that allows us to do is have the macro level discussions tailored down to a micro level. Because there is no doubt in my mind that being able to appreciate and work with the micro requirements of an individual, the last 5 or 10% has become more and more important in this post Covid era. Second thing around tips is certainly whilst we have the three group meetings and that should cover most of what you need, there are businesses where you're going to have heavy engagement with your delivery teams, or your customer care teams, or your technical teams. So for some businesses it's actually worth having weekly or fortnightly catch ups with those teams to make sure that everyone's aligned. The reason I really like those meetings is they certainly highlight any issues that are coming as early as possible and allow you to get out in front of them. Work kind of like your deal reviews where you get lots of different perspectives to be able to improve what you're Doing last but not least on here is make sure you keep varying the formats of those three meetings that we've talked about. They can become a little bit stale and monotonous if they're done the same way every time. So you as a leader, most salespeople or most sales leaders I've worked with are pretty creative. Throw that creative hat on and have a look at meetings that are leader led or team led, or you have an alternate community contributor driving them. You might do them walking or standing or even on video. You might deliver them via a loom or. I'm a big fan of that type of communication. We know. Right. But if you can change that variety, then you'll keep the meetings interesting. Okay, so a final word on this before we move on is that the above meetings are really important for team engagement and that's where I've really focused on. But for me, there's a little side benefit and that allows you as a sales leader to keep your finger on the pulse. It allows you to recognise those people that are more likely to perform by looking at their contributions, how engaged they are and really just their willingness to participate in the meetings. It's a great early indicator when you have a team member that might be falling off the edge and not quite working as you need to. And it's also a great indicator when you have a really consistent team member. Perhaps that's a little bit down. Right. Because their communication might be a bit lower. So if you're able to nail those three meetings, I think as a leader, you're off to a terrific start about building some engagement in a post Covid era when getting people together is really difficult. Everything we've just gone through, I'm actually going to be launching as a free resource. It'll be coming out at the same time as this podcast is released, so you'll be able to find it through social media or even getting in contact with us directly. Okay, so there you have it. Three of the best sales meetings and probably meetings in general that you should be having. Post Covid. So next week we're actually going to have another great guest. His name is Tibu Suris. He's going to talk about cold outreach and in particular focusing on LinkedIn. I'm a huge. A huge believer around using LinkedIn for not only prospecting, but managing customers through your pipeline and post sale, around referrals and building ongoing relationships because it has such a large audience as well as multiple ways to connect with people. Right. So there's more opportunity to connect than Just a single linear fashion platform, but there's also a huge database and willing listeners that want to hear what you have to say. So stay tuned for that. I think it's going to be a great session next week. If you weren't able to capture anything from today, please make sure you jump onto the show notes. I think we all know where they are, but again, they'll be on both on the website and on the platforms that you're listening. And if you'd like a little bit of extra help, make sure you get in touch with me and book a free discovery call. I'd love to help you specifically get in touch through any of the ongestsales teams on social media. I get across all of these or you can jump onto our website and make a direct booking as well. But before we leave today, we'll talk a little bit about a health and wellbeing tip. So to keep that mountain bike theme going, I had a great time by the way, but to keep that theme going. Hydration. Hydration is something that's really easily missed whether you're exercising or whether you're in the workplace. If you don't drink enough during the day and it actually impacts not only your sleep but also how you perform the next day. So I've always worked off a golden rule of a bottle an hour. So drink bottle an hour when you're exercising, but don't forget that when you're at work, you still need to be hydrating. So recently I've been listening to quite a few podcasts around diet and in particular hydration. And what's come out a couple of times is that first half of the day is really critical. So get your hydration levels up from when you wake until you're about four or five hours out from bed and then you can ease it off, but so easy to forget. So get that drink bottle in your bag and make sure it goes to work with you every day and stay hydrated. All right? Until next time. Keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve.

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