You must ensure that you and the team don't chase purple squirrels.
Stay focused and stick to the agenda during sales meetings. People are pretty predictable and purple squirrels are defined as things that they throw into a meeting that has nothing to do with the topic. They're really ways to distract the real purpose of the meeting. Sometimes this is done on purpose and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's done by you and sometimes it's done by them.
If you're showing up without an agenda and no real purpose of the meeting, then you're going to talk about lots of different things. You're actually, psychologically, showing up with a big cage of squirrels. You're going to let them out and say, "Let's talk about this, this, this, and this." It's a good conversation but people leaving say, "Why did I spend an hour here? What just happened?" You're all over the place.
We don't want our salespeople doing that. We don't want them to show up at a prospect saying, "Well, what would you like to talk about today?". You want them to have an agenda. You want them to lead the call because a sales call should have purpose, should have process. So should a meeting that you run, so, show up with an agenda. Show up with a plan. Figure out who should be at that meeting. Figure out what that agenda is so you don't show up with a cage of purple squirrels. If it doesn't fit the agenda, then don't let the squirrel in the room. Keep it locked out.
During the meeting, set the stage. Confirm how much time we're going to spend together. Share what the purpose of the meeting is and walk through an agenda. Invite additions to the agenda. After that point, no purple squirrels. Imagine a big sign, 'no purple squirrels in this room.' Why? Because it's not part of the agenda. If one sneaks in an open window, push it back out.
Take the opportunity to summarise all the key points that were said at the meeting. Validate that with other people. “Is this what we covered?”. Make sure you take the time to assign clear next steps - what's going to happen, when it's going to happen and who committed to taking action. After the meeting, self-diagnose. Ask yourself, "What could I have done better as a sales leader?" Send a follow-up email stating what you covered and what was agreed. Clearly articulate the next steps. If you do that every single time, a couple things happen.
Number one, the momentum you create in your company is phenomenal, unbelievable. The second thing that'll happen is, people will watch you and say, "That's the way I should be doing it." When you train and coach your people how to run a good sales meeting, it’s much more powerful if they've watched you do it. You can use yourself as an example.
The bottom line is, purple squirrels or red herrings, they're going to be here, but good sales leaders have cages and fish tanks to put them in every time they pop up and it's not by design. Purple squirrels will drive you nuts – look out for them this autumn.
You might also be interested in:
