Like many sales organizations, Shamrock gathers our team for an annual sales meeting to provide updates, share new ideas and build team camaraderie. For companies like ours with geographically dispersed locations, it’s even more important to bring the entire team together at one time, in one place, to create connections and allow for face-to-face conversations: These interactions are essential to our team-centered culture.
Over the years, we’ve developed our own formula for managing engaging, productive sales meetings. We start by creating a theme for our annual sales meetings to frame content and messaging. And we bring in vendor partners as guest speakers to provide timely, insightful presentations about marketing solutions relevant to every sales rep.
While Shamrock usually opts for an offsite venue, this year we held the meeting at our corporate headquarters, which allowed sales reps to connect and integrate with the rest of our employees at the home office. More than 30 years in sales has taught us: Change is good and mixing things up helps keep the entire team energized.
If you’re preparing for your team’s meeting, consider these tips below from Entrepreneur magazine for organizing a productive sales meeting:
1. Start with an energizer. Engage the group right from the start to set the tone for the meeting…introduce a motivational speaker, a video, or a group ice breaker.
2. Keep it simple. As you build your agenda, ask yourself: “Does this need to be included as part of the group meeting…or is this best managed as a sidebar?”
3. Manage individual updates. Give yourself a time allotment for updates—and stick to it.
4. Motivate and reward. Build motivation into the team meeting by making sales reps feel supported and appreciated. Use awards—funny, team challenges, performance-based—or simple hand-written thank-you’s.
5. Capability activity. Make sure reps walk away with new information that they can use to better manage and grow their business—whether that’s a new CRM platform or tips for bolstering social media presence.
6. Keep to a standard agenda. By following the above steps, you’ve created your agenda: Use it to keep you focused and on track.
Do you have unique elements or program features that are part of your annual sales meeting? We’d like to hear from you.
