Sales meetings are central to most businesses—but the most effective, high-performing sales teams know how to make them count.
These meetings are intended to align goals, track progress, share insights, and make sure everyone is on the right track and working toward the same objectives.
But without the right structure or engagement strategies, they can be tiresome and unproductive.
Let’s dive into everything you need to know about running successful sales meetings, including best practices that will help your team stay motivated and focused on the bottom line.
A comprehensive guide to running effective, engaging sales meetings
First, let’s cover the basics of a winning sales meeting.
What is a sales meeting?
Successful sales meetings go hand-in-hand with a winning sales enablement strategy. Like any business meeting, these are scheduled gatherings where you and your team can discuss goals, strategies, challenges, and any relevant updates.
In sales, you can use this time to focus on coaching, performance reviews (individual, team, and business levels), pipeline updates, and brainstorming sales tactics.
You know you’re doing it right when team communication and collaboration are improved—both of which drive better sales results.
Types of sales meetings
While your sales meetings might look different depending on your industry and overarching company goals, but there are some common formats that serve distinct purposes.
Here are a few examples, plus what you should cover in the sales meeting:
- Weekly sales team meetings – These are typically focused on progress updates, motivating your team, and sharing key metrics to align on goals. You can also touch on competitor updates and customer insights, keeping your team up-to-date on trends and movements that impact their work on the day-to-day.
- Pipeline review meetings – Use this time to talk about deals in progress and strategies your team can use to close them. This is also a chance to discuss cross-selling opportunities to employ while closing a deal with prospects or current clients.
- One-on-one meetings – Sessions between sales reps and managers are great opportunities to focus on coaching and feedback to improve performance. One-on-one meetings are also useful for sales managers and their executives/leaders to make sure sales is aligned on goals from top to bottom.
- Training and development meetings – These team meetings can be a great way to cover new sales techniques, product updates, and industry trends that can be used throughout the sales process.
- Quarterly business reviews (QBRs) – A high-level discussion on a quarterly basis can be valuable for evaluating overall sales performance and future strategies that can be used across the entire team and business.
Who should attend your sales meetings?
Of course, this depends on the type of meeting your hosting. When it comes to any group meetings focused on sales, your entire sales team should be present.
It can be highly valuable to include marketing team members when it comes to aligning on goals and strategies from a content perspective, as marketing helps support the sales team’s goals throughout the sales cycle.
Similarly, customer success teams can help provide insights on customer needs and pain points so that sales can take a more targeting approach to messaging while closing a deal.
Executives and leadership can be a helpful presence in quarterly meetings that focus on strategy or company-wide knowledge.
Ask the key question: Does the meeting have a purpose?
Regardless of the type of sales meeting you’re hosting, the key is to make sure your meeting has an actual reason for being held.
Too many leaders host meetings simply because it’s a checkpoint off their list rather than focusing on the value it has on the people attending.
The simple truth: If you can cover the content in a brief email, you can skip the meeting. This will make sure that when you do meet with your employees, it will actually be beneficial to everyone there and not a waste of time.
Sales meeting best practices
Speaking of wasting time, ineffective meetings are not only a time-drain, but they are also a huge money-drain.
With employees spending nearly 18 hours weekly in meetings, almost one-third of this is deemed unnecessary, according to one study. This can cost organizations about $25,000 per employee annually—that means $101 million each year for companies with over 5,000 employees.
When your meetings are unproductive, many team members will experience a decrease in morale and overall productivity. This means a significan impact on sales.
So what can you do to make your meeting more effective?
Consider these best practices:
- Keep them structured and consistent – Stay on track during the meeting by following a clear sales meeting agenda, and be consistent when it comes to recurring meetings. People like to know what they can expect beforehand so they can prepare accordingly.
- Encourage participation – Open discussions and idea-sharing can make the meeting more engaging and help your team feel like they have a purpose.
- Make them data-driven – Real numbers and data are more meaningful to your team when it comes to assessing performance. Theory only can get you so far.
- Set clear takeaways – Make sure your team knows what to do after the meeting is over by providing actionable next steps.
- Keep them concise – At the end of the day, people want their time to be respected, so try to avoid unnecessary discussions and stick to the agenda.
How to prepare for a sales meeting
Setting the right tone for a productive sales meeting means preparation.
First, define the purpose of the meeting—what exactly do you want to accomplish during this time?
This could be anything from reviewing the sales pipeline to developing a new skill. Regardless, knowing the objective will help shape the content.
Next, gather any relevant data from your CRM platform that will help provide insights for the meeting, such as performance reports, KPIs, active deal updates, etc.
Once you have your data in hand, focus on building a sales meeting agenda that outlines key talking points that can be distributed to attendees beforehand (along with any additional materials) so they can come prepared.
Finally, assign roles if necessary so that team members know who will lead each section of the meeting. This can keep the discussion engaging while giving others a sense of ownership over their participation.
How to create a sales meeting agenda
A solid agenda can help keep everyone focused during the meeting, plus it’s extremely useful when it comes to preparation.
Start by defining your meeting’s goals and tailoring the agenda to match. This could mean outlining the most critical items to discuss first. For sales, this could be performance metrics, deal progress, team challenges, and/or strategic updates.
Remember, prioritize topics based on urgency and relevance to your sales team’s goals.
Additionally, using consistent, recurring agendas allows your team to know what to expect and save time on figuring out various agenda items. Standardizing your agendas also allows team members to come better prepared with notes from the previous meeting, status updates, and anything else relevant to the meeting.
How to keep people engaged in sales meetings
Let’s face it: keeping your team engaged is a challenge that most leaders face today.
Here are a few simple strategies you can use to create an engaging meeting that your employees actually want to show up for:
- Start with a win – Everyone wants to celebrate recent successes, as it improves morale and keeps every individual motivated.
- Encourage participation – Asking open-ended questions is a great way to involve everyone in the discussion so that it feels collaborative, rather than a lecture.
- Use interactive elements – Humans learn and retain information differently—this means that using visuals, role-playing, or breaking out into smaller discussions can help address all different learning types and keep employees focused in the present.
- Limit meeting length – No one wants to be in a meeting longer than an hour. Keeping your meetings concise and contained will help with focus and make it seem more approachable from the beginning.
- Incorporate storytelling – Why not add a little flare to the conversation? Real-world examples and experience not only make discussion topics more interesting, they help make the content more digestible and relatable.
Common mistakes to avoid
There are plenty of pitfalls that can make your sales meetings less effective. Here are the key ones you should avoid so you can lead a winning meeting:
- Lack of clear objectives – If you don’t have a purpose for your meeting, it’s a waste of time. Simple as that.
- Overloading with information – Too many topics make it hard to focus on the purpose of your meeting. Sticking to a clear and concise agenda will help with this.
- Talking too much – If you’re a sales leader/manager, remember that your role is to facilitate the meeting, not dominate it. Encouraging participation will help with this.
- Not following up – Without providing action items for your team, your meeting will lose impact, meaning it becomes a waste of time and energy. More on this below!
How to follow up after a meeting
Following up is essential for making sure action items get completed and keeping your team goals on track. Here’s how to do it:
- Send a summary email – This will help recap key points and next steps for your team.
- Assign responsibilities – Make sure everyone knows who is accountable for each task so there’s no risk of miscommunication and lack of completion.
- Set deadlines – Due dates are always helpful for follow-up actions to keep the team on track.
- Monitor progress – Prior to the next meeting, check in with your team about key deliverables to make sure everyone is prepared and on the same page.
Tools that can help you create winning sales meetings
Ready to make your sales meetings more efficient?
Document management software allows you to create, collaborate, manage, and eSign contracts, all with one tool.
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Whether you’re a small or large business, sales automation will help your team more productive when it comes to managing proposals and contracts. Plus, you can collaborate on sales documents in real time using our document generation software.
What does this mean for your sales meetings?
You’ll have a more efficient process for proposals, contracts, and document workflow, meaning you can foster real-time collaboration, faster turnaround times, and more efficient follow-ups that will focus your team and keep propelling deals forward.
“PandaDoc has changed how we approach contracts, not just in terms of efficiency, but in the quality of the decisions we’re able to make. We can actually spot trends and adjust our strategy based on what the numbers are telling us. That kind of visibility is priceless for a volume-driven business like ours.”
– Christopher Ginty, Director of Revenue Operations at RemoFirst
Final thoughts
The best sales meetings will help your team be more successful, as it will keep engagement high and time used more efficiently, giving your team room to focus on what really matters: closing deals. Want to see how PandaDoc can work for you? Request a free demo today.