Just wondering for those of you whom hold weekly sales meetings... How do they generally go? Are they positive? What besides performance do you generally discuss?

we had monday morning meetings for our sales team...

we used salesforce.

we would discuss leads, closings, potentials, gotta haves, problems, and some potential trainings.

Honestly?

At the company I worked for for 24 years it generally turned into a bitch fest due to the boss being a hot head and most employees not respecting him because of that.

The last twenty minutes were usually spent with me calming everybody down and trying to unify us as a group to provide clients with an excellent experience.

I'm MR. Positive that dislikes arguments so I didn't really like it that much.

I did like the results with everyone working together again for a few more days.

Hopefully everyone has had a better experience and your workforce(and boss) had a little more positive attitude.

I miss the clients immensely after my 1700 mile move to the NW.
I still talk to many of my favorites weekly when they call to see how I'm doing and ask if I'm coming back to Kansas.

However, I don't miss the work environment that brought us together.

I keep hoping to find a company that is as upbeat as me in my "new neighborhood" that can focus on the work at hand instead of getting into an argument with the ones they shouldn't have hired in the first place!

Oh well......
Everyday is a good day.
Some are just better than others.

I think we had two shop meetings in the ten years I was at the last shop I worked at. Both of them were weird. Didn't accomplish much except to give everyone a forum to whine a little. It didn't help that the people running them knew nothing about running a meeting...

The salesmen didn't really have to have 'meetings' per se - they spent all day every day talking sales while they were working the floor and the phones.

I have worked for two companies that have had weekly sales meetings.
The first was wide open, we discussed all the financials pertaining to current and proposed projects, scheduling, engineering. Everything was an open book. Was a real eye opener for me as a tech working in my first "high end" shop.
Helped resolve a lot of issues and got everybody on the same page.

The second company that had them, well, they started out OK, but quickly evolved into "team building exercises" and BS cheerleading sessions.
Also, holding them at 7am on a Monday..... Bad.
Nobody wants to hear regurgitated buzzwords and catchphrases from "how to" books on successful businesses at that hour.

No kidding... "exceed the customers's expectations" --- "Think outside of the box" --- good grief, I mean - REALLY!?

...

Towards the end, I started viewing them as exercises in deck chair rearranging. On the Titanic.

Ha ha ha good one!

I am a one man shop....basically. I have my meeting every Wednesday at noon with my business coach. He is like my personal trainer.

He asks the tough questions I'd rather not answer to projects that haven't gotten over the hump. The meetings are what did you close, what new prospects, any roadblocks, any crappy customer interactions that need to be resolved?

That's it. It is a 15 minute portion of my week that is super valuable.

Why do you think you need the meetings and what do want to accomplish?

unless you and the others have great organization, I would expect the meetings to go in circles and get little accomplished.
Its amazing how quickly these become bitch sessions.
Try to make them fun and rewarding, so that everyone actually looks forward to the meetings vs. how most that look at them as a chore.

When I worked for another company the meetings were usually training sessions, unless the owner got involve, then they became a waste of time since the owner was a control freak idiot.


Never done on a Monday! Why start the week off with something that can ruin the day/week?

Meetings were on Thursday, so the guys could use some of the ideas on Friday before they forgot what they heard and headed out to the local strip club.

i'm not sure how you guys run your companies without sales meetings...

they are invaluable.

its ok to have a few minutes to bitch on a monday morning... your bitch may get fresh perspective from someone else on the sales team.

sales meeting allow you to be pro active and not re active

allows for accountability amongst the sales team, as well as competition.

sales meeting allow for trends to be spotted weekly so management can devise plans around trends.

sales meeting help with forecasting of manpower and monies.

what i see here is a bunch of C.I.'s that dont understand business... this is not a put down...

because i was the same way until i started my manufacturing company, and then the wifi company. I had the benefit of working with some amazing people who taught me a ton about business. MBA's from some of the finest business schools in the country and some of the wealthiest people i have ever met. notice i did not say successful... because money does not equal success

think of sales meetings like a financial spread sheet.... if you dont know where your company stands... you dont know when you may fall.

bruce, if this is the kind of crap going on at your sales meetings... i would be shocked.... your ownership and management people are to skilled for this...

if you want, grab my cell off of linkedin or facebook and we can talk about this.

ed