When was the last time you sat through a sales meeting and were fully engaged with the speaker in 10 minutes? I’ll speculate that that would be a rare occurrence in today’s world of the young ‘millennials’ that are hungry for this type of meeting but rarely get one delivered to them, if ever at all. A clear-cut strategy must be used for meetings the same way your organization lays out its monthly and annual business strategies.

Do you think great motivational speakers drone on for an hour, two hours and more? Or, do they have a proven plan. A great strategy to make a point and take action on their agenda!  Creating this vision is much easier than you think.

So, let’s discuss some ways to improve effectiveness of daily, weekly monthly sales meeting with 7 simple steps.  Why do we want to focus on these 8 simple steps? The workforce is rapidly changing and some of the latest statistics indicate that the millennials that are entering our workforce will be the most dominant, to the tune of 75%, by the year 2025, yes that’s a mere eight years away. They are a tech savvy group with very active minds and require engaging and short training sessions.

Let’s focus on the goal of what a sales meeting should incorporate.  The base principal that the presenter should do in preparing for the meeting is to first contemplate what to teach, how will you demonstrate the teaching point and how will you get the learner or the audience to apply this concept when they a have learned the point. Or in short, T-D-A, Teach, Demonstrate and Apply!

Often times the hour plus long sales meeting (it could be service, or it could be office staff, you pick the audience) ends with the learners or sales force walking out and happy to be let out of the ‘cage’ so they can get back to their desks and start planning lunch or when they will get off for dinner. If the meeting is properly conducted, the first thing the presenter should as is ‘’what is the agenda?” A clearly defined and laid out agenda is critical for insuring the meeting follows the TDA rules. One to three point is a maximum recommendation for the meeting. Does this happen every time?

Maybe not. You are assuming that the presenter has been well training in the strategic nuances of holding a meeting. The next question to ask is what is the point that is to be made in the meeting? Is it on a the sales process, leasing objections, getting a good Customer Satisfaction Review, how to do an effective walk around….there are a myriad of ideas out there, all you have to do is choose one that falls into the vision of your organization and turn it into an engaging and learning moment.

Once the point to teach is established and delivered, the instructor is to demonstrate the point in a way that resonates in a real world or live way. This will bring the concept to life for the learner or the sales professional in this case. Now, the most important part, applying the principal point in an engaging way.  This could be done by roll playing, by a gaming app, by an interactive game by a hand out that must be filled in.  Any way to turn the point into an activity of some sort is critical to the imbedding into the learners brain.

A final element is called the take away. The take away should be comprised of something simple the learner can take away from the presentation that they will inflect upon for the day.  An example would be a one sheet hand out that incorporates the key point, how it was demonstrated and the best practice.  This does not have to cover lots of writing.  Simple bullet points will work. The less wordy the better and now you have a living document that can be used to execute throughout the day and make it part of the new technique that was taken away from the meeting.

What are the additional benefits for your store? Excellent source of new training materials being generated. And with that additional materials added to the meetings on a weekly and monthly basis, a library of endless training modules that can be used over and over again. All good things.

So, I ask again? Are you interested in looking deeper into the 8 steps to develop effective sales meetings at your dealership?

Join me at the upcoming Digital Dealer Conference & Expo for my session Conduct Powerful 10-Minute Training Sessions and get a step-by-step guide to institute short and engaging training meetings that drive growth and sales.