By Dave Fellman
My last article for this newsletter was about “all hands” team meetings. Today, I want to talk about sales meetings. Because I think most “sales managers” meet far too infrequently with their salespeople.
Please note the quotation marks around “sales managers.” I know that many printing companies don’t have a full time Sales Manager, or for that matter, an extensive Sales Team. But somebody is still responsible – or at least someone should be! – for managing the company’s sales efforts. That may just be one of the many hats you wear as an owner, but I want you to recognize that it’s a critically important hat.
So let’s consider a “micro” situation, a printing company with one full-time sales employee in addition to the owner, who spends as much time as she can in the sales role, and not enough in the sales management role, and as a result, she’s not completely happy with the performance of that full-time salesperson, or the company’s sales overall. Here’s how I would use sales meetings to improve on that situation.
First, I would recommend a 10-15 minute meeting with the salesperson at the start of every day. The agenda is built around one question: What is your plan for today? As a sales manager, I want to know three things: (1) Is there a plan? (2) Does it represent a full day’s work? (3) What does the salesperson view as his/her priorities for the day?
In my experience, the difference between high sales performance and not-so-high performance usually hinges on the quantity and quality of work being done, and the biggest quality issue is making sure that the most important work is getting done. This meeting is a sales manager’s opportunity to get some “early input” into both.
Please note that after the first day on this program, another question comes into play: How did yesterday go? I actually recommend starting every morning meeting after the first one with this question, allowing you to compare yesterday’s plan with its execution. That can be the first third of the meeting, with the final two-thirds dedicated to today’s plan. I hope you see how this continuity stands to benefit both the manager and the salesperson. It’s not reasonable in our business to expect a morning plan to hold up through the entire day, but it’s still important to make sure that the proper adjustments are being made. Here’s another question I like to ask: If you could have yesterday to do over again, what changes would you have made?
The daily meeting is about activity. I also recommend a weekly meeting to talk about progress. More on that next time.
Dave Fellman is the president of David Fellman & Associates, Cary, NC, a sales and marketing consulting firm serving numerous segments of the graphic arts industry. Contact Dave by phone at 919-363-4068 or by e-mail at dmf@davefellman.com. Visit his website at www.davefellman.com.