Stirling Training Consultants

In the old days, hundreds of thousands of loyal office customers would walk into their friendly Pret a Manger store. They were greeted by an enthusiastic barista and would be handed a well-priced flat white in under two minutes. The same customer would be back for their lunch and probably return for a final caffeine hit mid-afternoon.

Now Pret has had to go into survival mode and has had to think out of the (lunch) box. It sells its coffee beans on Amazon; its products are available on food delivery platforms and it has even opened a ‘dark kitchen’. Its most headline-grabbing initiative has been its coffee subscription – all you can drink for £20 per month. Pret has had to adapt to survive.

Keeping customers loyal in changing times is not an easy feat to achieve. Nor is there a magic one-size-fits-all solution. However, when done effectively maintaining and even growing customer loyalty in difficult times will raise your brand above the competition and ensure your business’ continued success.

Signs have now become part of the new normal. They’re everywhere – in the workplace, public buildings, at the train station, the airport, in the shops, and on the street. They inform us, guide us and enforce rules upon us. However, signs can also evoke emotions in us.

Take a look at the signs below. How do these make you feel?

If you ask most people what they think about the signs they see in everyday life, they are either neutral or negative about them. This is understandable, signs are functional items. But what if we could take this opportunity to use signs to make a positive impact?

Despite the current ubiquity of signage, many businesses are missing the opportunity to use signs to reinforce their brand image and promote their corporate culture. A positive corporate culture not only improves customer loyalty (especially in difficult times) but it also improves employee loyalty and ultimately helps you attract new people to your business. Take a look below to see how you can take advantage of this opportunity.

Is your company still holding 3-hour sales meetings?

How quaint! How antiquated! How anachronistic!

We have all sat in three-hour sales meetings that painstakingly go through reams of data, dozens if not hundreds of prospects and countless slides outlining all the things everyone around the table hasn’t done. Some of us remember guessing how many people would fall asleep before the end. At least there was always a chance to catch up on your emails…but this was all pre-BC (before Covid).

Covid has Changed Meetings

Unless you have been living in covid-free Samoa, your world has changed drastically within the last couple of years. These changes have not only affected our personal lives (in often tragic ways) they have also impacted our professional lives. In particular, meetings have changed:

• Meetings were and often still are held via video conferencing.
• They were shorter, punchier and more focused on outcomes.
• Meetings were more frequent with each containing fewer but stronger short term action points.

Business priorities have also shifted since the onslaught of Covid-19:

• Winning new revenue outranks almost anything as the current top priority for businesses.
• Teams need focus, motivation and clear direction now more than ever.

Many of these changes were driven by necessity rather than strategy. However it is essential now that much of that necessity has past we don’t slip back into previous bad habits. Take note of what worked and what didn’t and make a conscious effort to embed positive change for the future.

What does that mean for your Sales Meetings?

Your sales meetings need to change to adapt to this changing environment. They need to be shorter, more efficient and more productive. But how do you do this? Take a look at the following practical changes you can start implementing today.

• Less Information: whatever data you normally include, halve it, then halve it again. Stick to essentials, if in doubt, leave it out.
• Pre-reading: Distribute well-written, accurately interpreted sales updates in a format that is easy to read and highlights key points.
• Replace the Agenda with Questions: Instead of an agenda send out a list of question and insist attendees arrive with answers.
• A Single Point of Focus: Give your meeting a single message, a single point of emphasis and a single course of action.
• Keep it Brief: Plan your meetings well so you can complete them quickly and get your sales team back to work faster.
• Motivate: Sales meetings are not a data transfer activity. Don’t over-complicate them. Make your meetings participative and enjoyable so your sales team leave the meeting feeling motivated and with a renewed sense of direction.

How should you plan your Sales Meetings?

A short, simple and effective sales meeting actually takes more planning than the long data-driven bore that we have all come to know and love. When planning your next sales meeting it is helpful to examine the following factors: Aim, Attitude, Facts and Timing (A.A.F.T.).

• Aim: What is the single most important outcome you want from this meeting. Focus everything towards that. If it is to get more closes, push on that, if it is finding new prospects, make that your focus. Have a single aim – and go for it!
• Attitude: How do you want attendees to feel? Motivated, confident, clear on the outcomes needed, excited, engaged, involved, important? Whatever it is, you need to design the meeting around this attitude and deliver it in a style and manner to achieve that.
• Facts: Ask yourself what information is really necessary to achieve the aim and attitude as stated above? Be minimalist. Make every piece of information tell a story and point your audience in one single direction.
• Timing: How can you make it shorter and punchier? Over the next 3 months should your monthly meetings be quick 30-minute motivating meetings every week, or every fortnight? Your meetings need to be varied, enticing, intriguing and above all, planned to bounce between input and discussion, you talking and them talking, serious points and a bit of fun. Keep it tight!

Would you like to improve your team’s sales skills? Take a look at our sales training courses today!

We analysed the fastest moving teams in a cross-section of FTSE 350 companies and rapidly expanding small companies to find out how their meetings had changed in 2020. Take a look at our findings below to discover how to have more dynamic meetings:

• Meeting Cadence
• Meeting Content & Focus
• Activity in Meetings
• Using Different Techniques

• Meetings are shorter by 70%
• Frequency is up by 2.4 times
• Reporting time has reduced by 45%
• Discussion time has increased by 400%
• Using different techniques has increased by 82%

1. Meeting Cadence: Frequency & length