Sharpen Your Greatest Sales Tool

When you hear the term "sales tool", what comes to mind? CRM, Blackberry, laptop? As you mentally list the tools provided for your sellers, do you include your sales meetings on the list? Think about it... In an effective sales meeting, the time you give, the experience of the team and a focus on sharpening everyone for success can make the meeting one of the greatest sales tools of all!

A tool is something regarded as necessary to the carrying out of one's occupation or profession (this definition brought to you by dictionary.com). Sound like any sales meetings you have been to? A necessary part of being more successful in sales? Meetings don't have to be an information dump. When you focus on using your sales meeting for more, your meeting does becomes a necessary tool to sharpen your team's skills, sales results and attitudes.

An effective sales meeting tool helps you:

• Motivate your sellers.
  
• Retain them as an employee.
  
• Help your team sell more.
  
• Beat the competition.
  
• Make your job easier.
  
• Strengthen the professionalism of your team.
  

Who wins with these benefits? Everyone! Your life will be easier and your career more successful. The sellers will have more confidence and competence to sell even more. And your boss will benefit from all your benefits!
Okay...it CAN be a great tool, but how do you "sharpen" it? With a focus on MORE! Most sales meetings I have observed or heard about, use most of the meeting time to share information - sales numbers, product updates, operational updates and complaints, and on and on and on - all items that could be summarized in an email.

Focus on MORE in your sales meeting by:

• Giving more time for input from the sellers. Ask them to brainstorm topics of interest, ideas for solving a problem, or how to tackle a difficult situation someone is working with.
  


• Equipping sellers to sell more. Building skill and ability is an ongoing process. Reinforce great book ideas, great articles, previous training seminars and more.
  


• Growing the team's ability to capture more market share. Make time for competitive analysis. Ask sellers to research the different competitors and report in.
  


• Helping the team use their technology tools more effectively. Share best practices and additional tips on how to use the technology to full advantage.
  


• Leveraging more of the expertise within the team. Set your sellers up as the experts on certain topics. Someone great at prospecting? Proposals? Getting Referrals? Let them give a 15-20 minute lesson to the rest of the team.
  


• Reinforcing more of what they are doing well. Make the time to point out specific actions that have shown success. Praise for specifics goes much further than general "You all did a great job last week."
  

For each sales meeting you have, decide on which MORE outcome you want. Then use your sales meeting as the great sales tool it can be by including relevant activities, discussion, information and interaction to sharpen your bottom line!