Use Sales Meetings as A Means of Developing Your Team
			Conducting concise skill building activities at sales meetings is a terrific way to enhance skills by encouraging your people to concentrate on one specific skill at a time. Consider assigning responsibility for the meetings to a different salesperson each week. Here are some examples of activities for sales meetings: Objections Drills. Distribute two index cards to each sales person. Ask them to write an objection that they have heard since the last sales meeting on each card. Collect the cards and redistribute them. Now, ask the sales persons to write responses to the objections on the back of the cards that they received. Collect the cards again and redistribute. The drill begins with a salesperson stating the objection on one of their cards and calling on a person to answer. Role Playing. Prior to the meeting ask each person to send you a story of what happened on one of their sales calls. Create scenarios based on these real life situations. Role play in groups of three. One person is the customer, one the salesperson, one the observer. Debrief in small groups and then large groups. Competition Study. Assign a competitive account to each of your salespeople. Ask each to research the competitive account and prepare a comparison of your advantages/disadvantages to the group.
					Invite a Customer. Make sure that you give the customer a clear understanding of why they have been selected to attend. Ask the customer to explain their business needs, what they like about your services and what they like about competitive services. Allow the salespeople to interact and ask questions much as if they were on a sales call. They will learn from the customer and from observing each other. Invite an Expert. This could be someone from another department, or someone from outside of the company. It is highly motivating for salespeople to hear what others are doing to be successful. Be certain that you give clear guidelines to the guest. Market Penetration. Ask each salesperson to anonymously submit what they would do to increase market penetration if they were given unlimited resources. Distribute and discuss these. Prioritize and vote on recommendations as a group. Then, act on the recommendations! Referral Exercise. List a half dozen personal referral opportunities on paper and make copies for each sales person. (Examples may be house paint, lawn care, babysitting, etc.) Ask the group, “If a representative of each of these services knocked on your door today and asked you if you knew someone who needed these services, how many people would you be able to name?” Have each salesperson list as many people as they can think of. This exercise is to demonstrate that one in ten people know someone who needs your product or service will give you a referral if you just ask. Just like organizing your calendar, exercising or any other worthwhile commitment, it takes a conscious effort to integrate these skills into your daily routine. Commit yourself to including skill development into your daily sales management functions.

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