The Four Sales Meetings: An Important Tool for Incentivizing, Motivating, and Driving your Sales Team

For most CEO´s and sales managers out there, the strategies used for incentivizing a sales team are often centered on typical motivational approaches where leaders attempt to get their teams pumped up and excited about the job at hand. In other cases, CEOs may tend to see their sales teams in a purely utilitarian framework. Following this logic, if you put a coin in the salesperson “machine,” you can expect to get some sort of anticipated result. That coin might be a new coffee mug, an all-expenses paid cruise vacation, or a generous bonus for reaching certain quota thresholds. Compensation plans based on fixed and variable payments mostly focuses on rewards and punishments for the salesperson, but generally ignores the quality and amount of sales made. 

Though there may certainly be a time, place, and purpose for this type of external motivation, this “machine-like” approach to motivating a team certainly overlooks some of the more complex nuances that come with the reality of human-centered sales teams. What if there was a better way? What if the compensation and incentive plan could motivate salespeople, but also gives them power to be the boss of their own business.

Listen to a quick clip from our CEO, Steve Johnson, as he dives into this concept below:

Here´s a wild idea: what if you made the salesperson their own CEO? This radical change would create a plan that matches business goals to behavior. It would hold salespeople accountable by taking more into account than just the numbers. It would also address the value and quality of the sales made and the cost to make them. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that sales leaders generally make great CEOs. 

Here at Scaling Sales, we believe that treating the salesperson as the CEO of their own revenue pod or revenue points is an essential first step in generating a more authentic and long-lasting motivational force. Given this starting point, the compensation and incentive for a sales team needs to be geared towards having them take ownership of their work, and build incentives that allow them to see the financial reward in that effort. By treating the salesperson as their own CEO, companies are creating an accountability system that rewards salespeople for the quantity and quality of the sales and for the true value they create for the business. By paying your sales team based on the profits they create, this can create a culture of excellence and make your business even better.

However, designing and implementing this type of motivational/incentive approach also requires significant more oversight and active participation with your sales team. In this short article, we will take an in-depth look at the four sales meetings, which is a fundamental part of implementing a compensation and incentive approach based on the “salesperson as CEO” foundation. 

We will also briefly take a look at how the solutions offered by Scaling Sales can help CEO´s, sales managers, and others find the best strategies for motivating and incentivizing a sales team.  

The Four Sales Meetings: An Overview

Encouraging your sales team to accept the responsibilities (and enjoy the benefits) that come with being the CEO of their own sales pods requires a foundational system that is consistently reviewing, supporting, and encouraging the salesperson. This system purposefully creates regular touch points in order to bridge the gap between what the salesperson believes he or she is achieving, and what is actually happening for the company. 

In most companies, a generic weekly sales meeting is conducted wherein the sales manager or someone else in a position of leadership tries to quickly fit in enough time for some nominal training, compensation overview, and deal review. This type of generic meeting generally is not effective in terms of public accountability for the individual salesperson. Instead of the generic weekly sales meeting, we propose a series of four sales meetings that can help to serve as a reality check for both the individual salesperson and the collective sales team. These four meetings also create natural spaces for: 

• effectively motivating both individuals and teams

• keeping the salesperson on track for accomplishing their weekly, monthly, or quarterly quotas

• generating new ideas for activities that can lead to generating new opportunities, and 

• designing sales strategies to help the individual close the deals they are working on. 
  

Starting from the idea that the salesperson has the responsibilities of a CEO for their revenue number/pod, the cadence of four sales meetings is designed between public and private meetings that focus on training and accountability/motivation. We will take a closer look at what each of these meetings entail, but here is a general overview of the purpose and content of those four sales meetings. 

Public Accountability and Motivation Meeting entire sales team comes together  review of top 2-3 deals for each sales rep analysis of most important deals from the company´s perspective pipeline review  review where every individual salesperson is at on their quota and how far over or under they are on those quotas	Private Accountability and Motivation Meeting Usually 3-4 times a month  Prime focus on deal planning  Low priority versus high priority deals Qualitative analysis of salesperson week/month followed by analysis of the numbers and quantitative data.  Development of a variety of compensation and incentive approaches based on specific parts of the funnel.
Public Training Typically held at the end of the week Based as an overview of the lessons learned by individual salesperson who shares with the rest of the group best practices that lead to sales growth Sales leadership comes in and does a group training session where everyone's involved	Private Training  Based off the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the private accountability meeting Develop together with the salesperson a training opportunity that they feel will most help them advance deals and win more deals. Focused on working with the sales reps to discover constraints is in the in their sales process

Public Accountability and Motivation Meeting

With the public accountability and motivation meeting, the entire sales team comes together. Together with the sales manager, the team reviews the top two to three deals for each sales rep. It is important that the top deals get highlighted and an explanation is given as to why these are the most important deals for the company. During this public accountability meeting, the sales manager or CEO can highlight different characteristics of the deal such as revenue number, strategic importance of the deal, etc. The individual salesperson also has a space during these meetings to report on the sales process, and his or her strategy for what needs to happen next in order to advance the deal.  But some may ask: How do you ignite and maintain this motivation? Here's another short clip from our CEO on this topic:

The second thing that happens in this public weekly meeting is that pipelines get reviewed. During this segment of the meeting the team looks at where they are in the quarter, and whether or not the team or individual has enough pipeline to maximize the deals that can close by the end of the quarter and start setting up for the following quarter. 

Of course, the public accountability meeting is also a great space to review where everyone individual salesperson is at on their quota for the month to date, quarter to date and year to date, as well as how far over or under they are on those quotas. This creates a sense of transparency and a healthy sense of competition amongst the team. 

Public Training Meeting

The public training meeting is usually held at the end of the week, and is generally a “lessons-learned” meeting space where each individual salesperson can explain best practices and approaches that they discovered throughout their week. Though there can be an opportunity for sales leadership to come in and offer a group training session focused on troubleshooting particular issues, it is generally the public training meeting is more effective when everyone on the sales team brings in their records from their sales and share their top one or two minutes. 

This quick moment of sharing of the best practices that each salesperson is discovering really can level up the team quickly and motivate the team. It is part of human nature that we are all looking for opportunities to look good in front of our peers, and this organization of a public training meeting focused on sharing best practices allows the individual salesperson to learn what really moves the deal. This approach also spreads around the best practices so that the whole team can benefit. 

Private Accountability and Motivation Meeting and the Private Training Meeting

The private meetings happen once a week, and can often be held simultaneously. In most cases, the lessons learned from the private accountability meeting can lead directly to training resources and motivational/incentive-based plans. 

At least three times a month, sales leadership should meet with their direct reports individually. These first three meetings are focused on analyzing the deals, questioning where the salesperson is in the sales process, and exploring what has to happen to advance the deal to the next stage in the process. This is also a great space to help the individual salesperson think about how to best prioritize their time. Might they be spending too much time on deals that are lower priority? How should the salesperson determine which deals are higher priority? These are some of the questions that might be asked during these first three weekly meetings.

Furthermore, during the private accountability meeting, it is important to set aside a time for the salesperson to tell the “story” of their week. This qualitative examination can then be compared to the quantitative data regarding: 

• How many new deals were produced? 

• What was their close rate overall? 

• How many deals did the salesperson close? 

• What was the average sales cycle time? All various numbers, right? 
  

By reviewing this quantitative data and comparing it to the qualitative story shared by the salesperson, it is not time to focus on private training needs. It is at this point that the sales leaders or sales manager says: “Based on what you shared with me through your story and what the numbers are telling us, what do you feel is the one thing that could most help you advance deals and win more deals?”

This discussion obviously leads into points of focus to follow up on for the following month, and individual training opportunities that can be mutually explored. 

The idea behind the private meetings is be constantly analyzing together with your sales reps where the constraints are found in their overall sales process. Once those constraints are determined, training, incentives, and motivation can be individually created to help spur more growth for the company and more sales for the individual. 

Conclusion

The four sales meetings outlined above can play a major role in motivating your sales team and discovering ways to boost your overall sales. Here at Scalingsales.com, we are here to help you identify the root causes of your sales issues, clarify where you want to be, and create a plan to bridge the gap between the two. We are also one of the few coaching and consulting programs that offers a free consultations where we can help you gather a clear picture of your issues, a plan to solve them, and in many cases we can even start working on an immediate sales problem you're experiencing such as sales compensation and incentives for your sales team. 

Our innovative and effective coaching and consulting program is designed to put the CEO and their team firmly in control of converting prospects into new customers and onboarding and leading their salespeople. Together, we can come up with innovative solutions to create a compensation plan that incentivizes and rewards results for your company, your clients, and your salespeople.

If you´re ready to get to the root of your sales issues, schedule a call today with Steve by following this link. You can also use this step-by-step checklist as your first step to attracting more customers, wining more deals and getting control of your revenue.