Boost Your Bottom Line With These 6 Tips for Productive Team Meetings
Every sales team works together most effectively when everyone is on the same page, as we might say. Most businesses hold team meetings to accomplish that, but are your meetings well-timed and well-targeted? Or are people getting together only because it’s on the calendar? If you consciously work to hold truly productive team meetings, you can boost your dealership’s bottom line.
And isn’t that the point?
Why are we here?
There are many potential benefits of holding team meetings. There is the obvious need to keep your people updated on progress toward sales goals, but you could accomplish that in an email. So why meet face-to-face? Productive team meetings focus on:
Sharing stories – what worked and what did not- Sharing challenges and personal insights/experiences that help others find solutions
- Brainstorming ideas
- Collaborating with your marketing team to refine personas and marketing messages so you can continuously improve lead gen, nurturing and hand-off timing
- New learning
Zero in on what matters most.
- Meetings should be a group effort, not a classroom-style seminar. That means the leader’s job is to keep the conversation moving, not to hog the microphone. Most sales people are “naturals” at talking with other people, but not everyone feels comfortable in a group setting, even among their own colleagues. You can boost your team’s individual confidence and help them gain new skills by assigning meeting leadership as a round-robin responsibility or asking individuals to make short presentations from time to time.
- Keep meetings short. Presumably your sales people are busy, and so are you, so don’t waste time. You can’t accomplish everything in every meeting, so don’t try. Pick two or three key topics that keep the focus on your ultimate goal: boosting your bottom line. For instance, you could include:
The required sales update – but go around the table and let each sales person speak for themselves about how they’re doing. This ensures everyone participates and gives people a chance to applaud and help one another. Recognition for a job well done, even a simple thank-you, boosts everyone’s morale. And coaching and supporting each other is the essence of teamwork.- A topic-of-the-day – a brainstorming activity, discussion of a current thorny issue or a learning presentation. Solving sales-related business issues and expanding your team’s knowledge and capabilities will increase sales. Learning should be both sales-specific and dealership-specific – what’s new with construction or trucking that will help sales team relate more empathetically to prospects and customers?
- Create a written agenda for each meeting and distribute it ahead of time, so everyone arrives prepared.
- Set a time limit for each agenda item, so meetings always end on time. Better yet, early. This enables your team to plan their day properly and shows them you mean business when it comes to making meetings count.
- Expect people to show up on time – after all, it shows respect for one another. If you have chronic late-arrivers, inspire them to change their ways by randomly doing a drawing within the first minute. Give away a logo’d shirt, lunch or dinner, a candy bar or points toward a really nice gift – change it up and keep it fun, but you’ll make your point.
- If there is no real need to hold the meeting, cancel it. No one will complain.
Keeping these tips in mind will help you create far more productive team meetings. People will look forward to each session, because they know they will benefit. They will be more motivated and happier in their jobs – excited to go forth and do what needs to be done to boost your bottom line.
