Imagine a business where it’s optional to turn up for sales meetings, where meetings are boring with no agenda, and where they start late and finish whenever – leaving reps feeling they can be better occupied elsewhere! It doesn’t happen in your business, of course, because you know the importance of effective sales meetings.
But do your reps?
And moreover, how do you make those meetings not only regular and effective but also geared to the full range of reps you have on your team?
Because getting all those aspects right is what makes effective sales meetings important: They grow your business.
A few points are obvious in stressing the importance of having effective meetings.
- You can assess and evaluate how well your team is executing your strategies.
- You can look at KPIs and other metrics together and provide direction for the whole team.
However, as Forbes says: “Too many sales meetings are nothing more than a series of updates designed to help the sales manager do his or her job.”
The importance of effective sales meetings goes far wider than this! They’re only truly effective if they improve the whole sales operation of your CPGs in a broad range of ways. Let’s see how!
What Makes Effective Sales Meetings Important?
It’s hard being a sales leader in charge of running these team meetings! You probably have thoughts like: “I need to strike the right balance between experienced sales reps who know how to market our brand to new retailers, and newer reps who are still learning how to sell to retailers. How do I engage with both groups?”
So, let’s focus on things that bridge that age and experience dichotomy in your sales meetings.
Build a Good Sales Culture
Reps quickly leave a toxic sales culture. So – build a positive environment by forging a good culture as the basis of your whole business. Celebrate your brand’s value; celebrate wins. Celebrate new distribution, whether for bathroom tissue or salad dressing!
Foster Teamwork
Instead of focusing only on individual targets, it’s important in an effective sales meeting to build teamwork towards company goals. Each rep has strengths to help another rep learn something. This gives a sense of unity and joint purpose when promoting your brand, whatever the level of task.
Manage Time Well
What does this mean? The importance of running an effective sales meeting is that it feeds into your business culture, as mentioned. To do this well, you therefore need some tactics!
Firstly, have an agenda and a fixed start and end time. This makes the best use of available time in a busy sales day or week. You can’t afford your competition to spy a sudden opportunity while you waste time!
Secondly, timekeeping models to your staff how to respect other people and make the most use of what time you have. This applies not only within the meeting but also to how you want your reps to deal with your clients: in a timely and professional manner. Your brand is affected by how your reps work. Model good practice in your meetings.
Thirdly, well-run meetings inspire
- confidence in your leadership,
- motivation among your team members, and
- a sense within your team of being aligned to one purpose.
Together, you are your CPG brand. The productivity and profitability of your company depends on this sense.
MomentumCPG Can Help You Build Effective Sales Meetings
Breakthrough planning and implementation is in our DNA. We can help you forge successful and effective meetings for your sales team so you reach next level growth and can compete with the big names out there in CPG. Call us and let’s talk!