Boring Meetings Suck: Get More Out of Your Meetings, or Get Out of More Meetings

Sales Team Meetings Suck

Let me be clear about something: Sales managers who talk at their salespeople during sales meetings commit a compound infraction—time lost in the meeting plus time the salespeople could have been selling. But it gets worse. It takes at least the same amount of time to recover from a session of information overload as it took to hold the meeting in the first place. Yikes!

A sales meeting focuses your team members on common objectives, motivates them, and provides the necessary support for them to be more effective—that is, sell more. If you, as a sales manager, haven't fully planned your weakly (oops, I mean weekly) team meeting and instead ask for updates on what's in their pipeline, stop fooling yourself. That won't accomplish your purpose—not one bit. Here's what I've learned from my days as an inside sales rep in the software industry and as a vice president of sales in the insurance industry (with 52 offices): Most sales meetings suck! And if your team members are honest with their feedback, they'll tell you that, too.

I remember it well. In a sales meeting far, far away … or maybe in the conference room next to your cube …

Every Monday morning brought the inevitable weekly sales meeting at nine o'clock sharp! If you were late, the fearless and breathless sales manager (otherwise known as the Wind-Up Toy) would sic his assistant on you like Jo-Jo, the junkyard dog. You'd be called incessantly, until either you or your death certificate showed up.