How effective are sales meetings? What’s working and what’s not for distributors? At a recent monthly Industrial Sales Management Peer Group meeting, the answers were all over the map.

Most of the group’s members were having if not a regular monthly or quarterly meeting, a weekly touch-base with their sales teams. One distributor said it has a sales meeting maybe three times a year in the company’s headquarters. Despite only being able to meet a few times a year in-person with the full team, each Monday the distributor conducts a remote training session featuring manufacturers.

Another distributor also traded bigger meetings for more frequent touches via conference call. Each week, the distributor holds a WIG (wildly important goal) session, inspired by Franklin Covey principles. He asks salespeople to share the most important one or two things they need to accomplish that week; the following week he checks to see if they were able to do so. Every few months, this distributor also touches base one-on-one with salespeople on their annual goals as part of the company’s strategic planning process.

The distributor still holds company-wide meetings a couple of times a year to update the team on what’s going on, as well as to bring manufacturers in to train on products.

Another distributor’s meetings are centered on manufacturers’ visits. He always has an agenda. “I figure if I can’t come up with an agenda, we probably don’t need to have a meeting,” he says.

Distributors’ approaches vary, but most agreed that the meetings are an effective way of keeping often far-flung salespeople on the same page – though keeping the meetings on track can sometimes be a challenge.

Here are eight tips for ensure your sales meetings are effective:

• Make sure each meeting is more than just sales managers talking. In other words, avoid the “blah blah blah.”  
• Use an agenda every meeting so there are no surprises and everyone knows the goals.
• Get everyone involved. Ask salespeople to share successes, applications, failures and so on.
• Include inside sales and service. Look at all the touch points with your customer, and get those employees involved. It can really help to improve communication on your team and uncover potential opportunities that perhaps your outside salespeople have missed. It also contributes to building a team-selling ethos.
• Share numbers showing how well your company is doing on reaching its goals.
• Bring in a guest speaker from outside the company. That speaker might be motivational or could address topics such as time management or industry trends. If a speaker isn’t local, ask them to present via the web. Guest speakers can help your team think differently about things. A good source of potential local speakers is your Rotary Club.
• Welcome manufacturers to the meetings.
• Have your president/CEO give a company overview and state of the union.

Perhaps the best advice for any sales meeting: Don’t make it a funeral. No matter how things are going, keep the meetings uplifting. Of course you need to focus on both the good and the bad, but always look forward at what can be done to reverse the latter.

This blog series from Brian Gardner, founder of SalesProcess360, is based on monthly meetings with members of his Industrial Sales Management Peer Groups, which discuss issues important to distribution and manufacturing sales managers and executives. If you are interested in joining a Peer Group, visit salesprocess360.com/industrial_sales_management_peer_groups or contact Brian Gardner at [email protected].

Gardner has spent more than 25 years in sales and sales management in the industrial market. He served as a sales manager for a major regional rep/distribution company for 15 years before founding Selltis LLC, the only industrial-focused sales team CRM solution. He contributed to the MDM book The Distributor’s Guide to Analytics and his new book ROI from CRM will be published by MDM this spring. Get notified when it is available to order.