What Your Sales Team Can Learn in Two Minutes…
As the sales leader for your team, it’s your job to be sure your team has the knowledge and skills it needs to compete, and no one knows your industry and situation better than you do.
One of the MOST POWERFUL ways being used by the strongest sales managers we work with is a bit counterintuitive. Instead of making themselves the focal point, they have the members of their sales team teach each other!
In our book and workshops, we advise sales leaders to start holding weekly sales huddles where producers can talk about issues and challenges they are facing in the field, give feedback on winning techniques and raise topics concerning their selling situations. The only catch is these meetings take no longer than 20 minutes – and some times even less. Moreover, each person can speak for no more than two minutes at a time!
This last point often surprises people, and understandably so. Don’t your salespeople need longer to fully explain themselves? Believe it or not, they usually don’t. We have found that two minutes is an adequate amount of time to talk about what’s going on and get some feedback, and short enough that most of your salespeople won’t be tempted to skip the meeting out of fear that it’s going to put them behind.
What can a team cover in two minutes or less?
Here is the format we recommend each person follow when it is their turn to chat:
- Share their top opportunities in play for the week
- Recap significant wins / losses
- Highlight lessons learned from the previous week
- Identify bottlenecks
Top sales managers tell us that getting a steady stream of two-minute thoughts, perspectives and pieces of advice turns out to be just the thing to keep their sales team energized and thinking creatively.
It’s not so long that they get bogged down considering every idea and implication, but it’s long enough for them to pick up an idea and see the benefit. And as the weeks roll on, so will the quality of the two-minute segments – meaning that your salespeople are always getting a little bit better week to week.
Short sales huddles are a great way to make things more interactive. You might be surprised at just how much your sales team can learn in two minutes or less.
Start your sales huddles this week!