Stand up for your stand-up: It'll make a difference

The purpose of a daily stand-up meeting is to wake the entire sales team up. Get them pumped and ready to sell.

Read the full article: Ultimate guide to effective sales stand-up meetings

When my clients come to me with their sales team's problems, challenges and struggles, I like to go through all the basics. I want to figure out what's working and what's not working.

One of the most common areas sales leaders get wrong is the classic stand-up meeting or daily sales huddle.

You may think it's just a meeting, Ali. No way is it contributing to our sales challenges.

You're mistaken.

Here is my guide to ensuring a more productive and impactful meeting with your sales team.

What is the purpose of a stand-up meeting?

You can call it daily scrum meetings, sales huddles, or stand-up meetings. Essentially, it's a daily meeting led by the sales leader with the sales team. It is basic project management and an impactful sales tool.

I have watched my fair share of stand-up meetings- sometimes ten to fifteen client recordings in one sitting.

Sometimes, I attend in person.

And what is clear is that many sales stand-up meetings lack purpose and focus. It is a meeting for the sake of meetings. You see this on the face of the salespeople when they leave the huddle - it sucks the energy.

So, what is the purpose of a stand-up meeting? The actual purpose of a daily stand-up meeting is to wake the entire sales team up, prepare them to sell by checking the pipeline, and stress testing the deals and activity for the day.

As the sales leader, I want every team member ready to go to work and sell. Ensure your entire team is on the same page and thinking the right way.

The sales stand-up is equivalent to an NBA player shoot-around before the game.

You go to a basketball game, and 10-15 minutes before tip-off, they're warming up - they're doing layup lines and little drills.

But that's not them getting ready for the game.

They've been there for hours doing their actual program warm-up routines. For some players, their warm-up routine is as little as 45 minutes to upwards of an hour and a half.

And these are very intense drills, not just layups and shoot-arounds. They are getting their body game ready.

When they walk into the game, they're entirely warmed up. They're in complete flow and complete rhythm.

The point is that the layup lines and shoot-arounds are not the full warm-up. In the same way, you need to understand what the stand-up meetings are doing for your sales team.

The key to the daily huddle is intensity. There needs to be intensity.

You don't want your stand-up meetings to be a simple layup line -that's just for the fans.

So, ask yourself these three questions,

·?As a sales leader, what am I here for?

·?What are we here to do?

·?And ultimately, what do we need to do to prepare team members?

Ask these questions, maintain consistency, and make the meeting productive and worth your time and your employees' time.

Stand-up meeting benefits

Daily stand-up meetings offer an array of benefits to employees and the company:

·?Increases intensity and warms up the team to sell

·?Saves time with fewer meetings on individual progress checks

·?Reduce road blocks and stucks in the pipelines

·?Strengthens the team's concept of common goals

·?Roleplay warms up the sales team's mouths and preps them for daily activities

·?Promotes transparency and accountability within the team

·?A pipeline check provides an honest assessment of the team

·?Expand the sales knowledge with topical & current discussion on challenges

·?Boost your sales teams’ skills

·?Highlight low accountables vs high-performing team members

·?Stress checking the pipeline highlights the good, the bad, and the ugly in your salespeople's timeline

Stand-up meetings basics

Where should a meeting take place?

The number one problem I see is that so many of these sales stand-up meetings are remote now. So, it's not a stand-up. It's a sit-down.

The whole reason for your stand-up is to raise your team's velocity. You can't do that sitting down.

So, first, stand up.

Get your blood going. Get your body moving. Get your mouth moving. It creates energy.

In open-concept workplaces, your stand-up meeting is behind the desks.

This is not advisable for your team members.

Instead, conduct your stand-up meeting in a conference room where you and your salespeople can stand, sit or move around.

The key is to ensure your standing in front of the whole team.

How long should huddles last?

A stand-up meeting length should last between 5-to-15 minutes. These short meetings, typically in the morning, should be no more than 15 minutes; anything longer than that is annoying for meeting attendees. And anything less will not meet goals for the meeting in the first place.

Ensure these daily meetings occur first thing in the morning. It helps your team member get warmed up and avoids prime selling hours.

Who should run the daily huddle?

The reality is that your sales leader needs to run these sales meetings because that is their role.

I know this seems like an obvious answer, but I have watched many stand-up meetings where the meeting leader is anyone but the sales leader.

A sales manager and project manager might run it. I have even seen new team members run a sales meeting.

Unacceptable.

A sales leader's role includes:

1.??Nurturing sales talent

2.??Strategic & creative thinking

3.??Sales culture development

How are the team members supposed to respect the sales leader if the sales leader doesn't lead the meeting agenda?

Does your sales leader need help?

A sales team's winning culture can be your game changer. However, playing to win means you lead with creative solutions.

Do you know how to find creative solutions to these issues preventing team progress? Can you be creative? Can you lead? Can your team learn from you?

Maybe, you don't have your focus. Then, your business needs help.

Let me be clear, if you were going to find the solution to your sales problems, you would have seen and solved them by now.

You need support and help to solve them.

Rose Garden is solutions-focused, so if you want me and my team to ignite your revenue growth, we will do so with our Sales Accelerator Process and Team Assessment.

Read the full article: Ultimate guide to effective sales stand-up meetings