Is your organization doing it's best to lead value-driven sales meetings? From our experience and research here at Fusion Learning, the ability to lead successful sales meetings is essential.

Why?
  · Instils personal accountability for results
  · Motivates
  · Educates and develops
  · Communicates key messages
  · Improves culture and team dynamics

Below are the first four of eight keys from our "Leading Successful Sales Meetings" program. The remaining four keys will follow in the August/September issue. These keys will provide you with a great guide to leading successful meetings.

Key #1 - Consistent Agenda
It is important to concentrate on a solid four or five consistent agenda items. You can mix-up one item each meeting, but keep 80-90% of the agenda items the same. This will save time and instil accountability.

A sample agenda for weekly sales meeting:

Key #4 - Success Stories
A great benefit of gathering as a team is to share best practices, stories and ideas. When sharing success stories to:
  · Use a common format
  · Make it a regular part of meetings
  · Focus your team's attention on how
    this story can be leveraged

Communicating compelling success stories is a skill that differentiates high performing sales people from the rest of the pack. Here are elements to make your sales story compelling:

  · Make it short & simple (one page maximum)
  · Rehearse telling the story
  · Be thoughtful about to whom you
    are communicating
  · Make it about the client, not you

A well-structured story can help the listener "see themselves" in the story. It can also act as a springboard for you to ask questions about how this story could apply to them.

Here is a structure that will work for you:

CLIENT SITUATION
What was the situation before you helped with your product or service offering? What was the client's goal?

THE CHALLENGE
What did you uncover as the challenge? Time? Resources? Expertise?

THE SOLUTION
How did you address the challenge with your product or service offering?

THE IMPACT?
Any quotes or data to support the value you brought to your client?

Whether it is in verbal or written form, communicating success stories in a clear and compelling way is one important part to winning more business.

Do you know where the terms "Hunters" and "Farmers" came from?

Dr. Herbert Greenberg, a business psychologist, was the first to use these terms in research for Harvard Business School in 1964. Three years earlier Dr. Greenberg had developed a test for identifying outstanding candidates for sales roles. The test was born of a frustration that "in an era when we were racing to the moon, why couldn't we predict whether a job candidate could succeed in sales?"

Four decades later, this tool, updated and modernized, is still used by the Fortune 500 companies in their sales recruitment process to identify candidates who have the characteristics and drive to be top performers.

Check out www.caliperonline.com to learn more.

* www.caliperonline.com : About Us section & article: Best Producers Share Many Personality Qualities.

(The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients) by Jeffrey Fox (Hyperion, 2000)

Why you should pick it up
A number of quick, helpful hints for how to "make it rain" as a salesperson.

A sample from Chapter 28 (page 83/84) - "Onionize")
"The Rainmaker must understand all of the customer's concerns, desires, fears, and limits. The Rainmaker cannot turn the customer's need into a want until he or she knows how to put value on the customer's desired state. Just as a sous chef peels an onion layer by layer, so too the Rainmaker helps the customer get to the "heart of the matter."




Excellence in Leadership & Management:
Leader As Teacher - live via satellite Noel Tichy
Wednesday, June 11
Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. West, Jackman Hall

Bell Gift of Wisdom: Managing Change:
Dr. Marti Smye
Wednesday, June 18
Toronto Board of Trade, First Canadian Place

Uncover Your Prospect's Success Criteria:
Alice Wheaton
Thursday, June 27
Canadian Professional Sales Association, Radisson Hotel
Toronto East

"It's important to listen to what a client is saying. But it's even more important to listen to what they are not saying."
-Greg Paull, Audience Communications, Participant of Consultative Selling Skills program,
March 2003

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