According to statistics, most people dread meetings and consider them a complete waste of time. They hate sitting through bad conferences and are always scrambling and wondering how they will deal with the time loss at the end of these meetings.
Bad meetings are mostly entirely out of context and take away a lot of time from the workforce’s productive hours. They have no relevance or significance to the workforce’s area of expertise and are incredibly wasteful.
Sales professionals have to sit through many such meetings in their lifetime, and like other people, they too dread it completely. They always complain that these meetings are entirely out of context and add no value whatsoever to the professional’s talent or ability.
They also say that they would be more than glad to sit in meetings which add to their expertise and make them better at the work that they are doing. Many people take leaves if they have a full-day meeting and send advance notifications saying they will be busy. Overall they consider these meetings a complete waste of time and energy and would prefer sitting at home rather than taking them forward.
There are many ways inside sales meetings can be exciting; all you need is a little insight and interest to make people akin to meetings. Meetings aim to help people put their heads together to firefight or steer their way out of problems.
They need not be annoying or distasteful. The workforce should look forward to getting together as a team and ideating and should not be fed by these meetings. Let us look at the steps people can choose to make meetings interesting.
1. Hold meetings simultaneously
A golden rule for every enterprise is to hold meetings at the same time and day of the week each time unless there is an emergency. This way,, the workforce will be prepared, get used to the schedule, and prepare in advance for these meetings. Make sure that you notify them in advance about the meeting, and they have all sent some of the other responses to the emails sent. They should be in a position to justify themselves if they are unable to attend the meeting.
Once you make sure that you consistently hold meetings at the same time and day of the week, you will see that there is a set pattern, and people are used to this pattern. They will inevitably adapt to the model, such as finishing their work in advance and making sure that they have canceled all other meetings because they have prioritized this meeting over others. Slowly and steadily, they will start participating and raising pertinent pointers too and will not escape from the meeting time and day.
2. Make the meetings interactive
The sales meeting should be full of interactions and insights. There should be many active participants, and everyone should voice their opinions, ideas, and queries if any. Sales meetings are all about sharing reports and insights.
As a manager, if you have noticed that a particular person has done some clever work, it needs to be discussed openly in front of everyone so that they get the due recognition and the other team members learn from it. All success stories need to be addressed at length in these inside sales meetings as the team will benefit greatly learn from them.
Similarly, professionals should be allowed to speak their minds in the sales meetings, and they should be made to interact as much as possible in these meetings. If there are some problems or impediments, they need to be discussed at length, and all the members should come up with some other solutions to solve them together.
A perfect way to break the ice is to keep it light and start with a work-related light-hearted incident. Keep it simple and light, and don’t make it a session wherein the atmosphere is dense and people are nervous and anxious to attend the meeting
3. Meetings should add value and expertise to the salesperson
At the end of the day, as a manager, you should make sure that the sales meeting adds value to the professionals attending it. It should not seem like a frivolous affair, and professionals should not crib and dismiss it as another waste of time. As a manager, it is your duty to make sure that the professionals gain something out of it and that they are satisfied and happy that they attended the meeting.
4. Set the mood and theme of the meeting by asking for opinions and ideas
If you want people to participate and interact as people for their thoughts and opinions. Set a theme for each session and ask the attending members to ideate about the mood. This will make the meetings interesting, and people would like to participate in it.
