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#44: 5 ways to run a better team meeting

#44: 5 ways to run a better team meeting

5 ways to run a better team meeting

May 28, 2022

Reading time: ~3 min.

Enjoy this week’s email….because who doesn’t want a bluebird every week???

Get the sense your B2B sales team is bored during team meetings?

Ah yes, the weekly sales team, otherwise known by reps around the world "as a great time to catch up on email..."We've probably all suffered through really bad ones and had a few that have been decent. Sometimes leaders feel like they have to have one, but then don't put enough time into making sure that their team actually WANT to show up. So whether you are a leader who wants their meeting to be great, or an IC who wishes their boss's meeting was great, here are 5 tips to make them interesting, make them fun, but most importantly, make them valuable.

1. Make video mandatory. No exceptions.

It's just so much easier to connect when we can see each other
- we can see our teammates, we can see facial expressions, whether we are presenting or listening
It's also much harder to multi-task when you know people can see you!

2. It's not all about you!

Ask the team what they want to happen on these calls.
Ask the team to drive the agenda each week.
Empowering teams to create the agenda will make them feel more in control of the direction of the meetings, bringing value and drive to ensure the success of these meetings

3. It's the 2020s, include everyone!

If you are met with deafening silence as you ask for thoughts, feedback, ideas, you probably need to ask better questions.
Prime the team beforehand that you will be looking for their contributions on a certain topic. give them the chance to think about it before the call.
Ask specific questions, not general ones
- Don't say: what do you think?
- Do say: how do you plan to use this on your next sales call?
Call on specific people
- Don't say: "So what do people think?" or "Does anyone have any feedback?"
- Do say: John, how do you plan to use this on your next sales call?"

4. Set the tone in the first 5 minutes.

Spend the first few minutes connecting and doing something fun
- I once worked for a sales leader with about 50-80 reps on his call and he would start every call with music. Each week one of the team would play a song, and then get the chance to nominate the next person.
Perhaps a little storytelling?
- Nominate someone and give them time to prepare in advance with a war story, a funny story, a stupid thing that happened out in the field....whatever it might be! There might be a lesson there or maybe just a hilarious story.

5. Give your meeting a reason to exist

Too often the weekly call is very generic, almost going through the motions.
Instead, give each call a focus or an objective. If you have a 60-minute call, perhaps 30 mins are for the usual items each week, and 30 minutes is set aside for an important topic.
And maybe you have a theme for the month or maybe even a quarter, but everyone goes into it knowing what to expect. The more focused the meeting, the more value it has.
Focus topic ideas:-
- pipeline generation
- beating a specific competitor
- killer qualification questions that got results
- perfecting the first meeting sales deck
- reviewing a recorded discovery call

There are a lot of different things that we can do and ultimately it's about emotionally connected people to their teammates, setting the right tone and providing value to our teams.Here's a link to the Sales Bluebird episode for more>>>

Time for a dad joke break...

What did the evil chicken lay? Deviled eggs.

Shit we've got to stop saying...

Rooting for you,

Andrew MonaghanChief [email protected]