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Expand Your Precious Time with Sales Meetings

Guest post by: Nancy Bleeke

Article Overview: Time. Such a fleeting thing for most of us. We can’t add a 25th hour in our day, so the question becomes, how do we get more time? The answer is by being more timely. And you can do that with sales meetings.

Expand Your Precious Time with Sales Meetings

Time. Such a fleeting thing for most of us. Busy sales managers are on a merry-go-round as they try to keep up with long To Do lists, fewer resources and constantly changing economies, technology and processes. We can't add a 25th hour in our day, so the question becomes, how do we get more time?

The answer is by being more timely.

A survey by the Sales Management Association (SMA) found a disparity between how sales managers actually spend their time compared to how they WANT to spend their time. The largest difference is in how much time they want to spend with their sellers. It seems the demands of corporate outweigh their best efforts to accomplish the real goal of a sales manager: Make sales numbers through salespeople!

This isn't anything you don't know. You know you are stretched thin. So, wouldn't it be great if you could e-x-p-a-n-d your time? You can, while helping your sellers prepare to beat the competition, capturing more market share and selling more -- when you are timely with your sales team!

The time you spend developing your sellers to be more competent and confident pays huge dividends with increased sales and gives you precious time! There are several ways to be timely with your team:

• Field Rides and Partner Selling
  
  Individual Coaching
  
  Sales Meetings
  
  All of these actions are necessary and important ways to develop your sellers and meet sales quotas. But which one will expand your time most quickly? Your sales meetings. An effective sales meeting makes a HUGE difference for your WHOLE team.
  
  How much time do most sales managers spend with their sellers? The SMA survey found most spend just 45 minutes a week with each seller. A 60-minute sales meeting can quickly double that!
  
  It's really easy to brush off bringing the team together. After all, isn't EVERY minute in the field the most important use of everyone's time? Probably not. The benefits of consistent and timely connections outside the "front line" include improvement in:
  • Readiness - Prepare to maximize every sales opportunity by strengthening their skills, mindset and knowledge.
  • Recharging - It's tough out there. Sellers need time to be re-energized to give it their all back in the field. Better with you and their colleagues rather than the local coffee shop.
  • Repeatability - The team needs time to review and learn from each other so all can repeat what goes well (and stop what isn't working as soon as possible). Sellers like to know they're not alone "out there." The other sellers have the same frustrations, challenges and home-runs. Now they can stop wasting time trying to figure out what they should/should not be doing or calling each other.
  • Retention - Turnover decreases when there are regular touch-backs with you and the rest of team.
  
  
  How do you capture more of that elusive time? Let us know in the Comments section.
  
  

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Article Tags: better sales meetings, sales booster, sales managers training, sales meeting ideas, sales professionals training, sales team training, sales training, sales workshops
Referred by: http://www.michelepw.com/



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