Have objectives – why do you want a weekly conference call with your sales team? Here are some typical objectives we’ve seen:

• Pipeline visibility – find out what deals are being worked actively


• Accountability – most reps want to look good in front of peers


• Motivation – recognize desirable behaviors and correct poor behavior


• Share best practices – ensure all reps are replicating successful approaches


• Competition – use to stay current on competitors and selling strategies


• Reporting – use to glean information for your own executive reporting

Set the agenda -- the most effective meetings we’ve seen have agendas that map directly to the objectives above. Here’s a sample agenda:

• Kickoff – bring some hunor and positive energy to set tone.


• News – update your staff on upcoming events, marketing campaigns, product news, partnership updates, organization, etc so they are current on happenings.


• Sale rep reporting --- reps update on open action items and only on changes since prior week on key metrics such as closed sales and pipeline maturity at each stage from contact to contract. Use this opportunity to praise desired behaviors and correct/coach otherwise


• Win/loss – do a quick post mortem on last week’s wins/losses


• Competition – review competitive developments and best response.


• Call to action – summarize your priorities and expectations for the week.

Same time, same place – help your reps plan it into their calendar by holding the concall at the same time, same day of the week each week, and for the same duration (usually 60-90 minutes). Best times are usually first thing Monday morning so people use the week to focus on action items coming out of the call.

Track action items – assign someone else to capture action items including owner, due date, and date item was created. Keep this in one master spreadsheet and distribute each week before the team meeting. Be sure to pay attention to open action items. If you reps see that you don’t demand follow up, they will ignore the action item list.

Balance fun & fear – the best sales managers tend to use sales concalls to have fun with the staff with jokes, jests and jabs to lighten up the atmosphere. But equally, these managers are artful at making serious points. They rebuke and chastise where needed to ensure the team does the right thing. The key is balance since a meeting that’s all fun (back slapping) or all fear (table pounding) is unproductive. We’ve seen both extremes, and believe us, the balance approach wins.

You’ll know you’re running these calls when you can clearly say you achieved the meeting objective. And one simple measure of this is whether anything surprised you. The fewer surprises you get, the more you are getting visibility of reps actions and anticipating problems/opportunities.

© 2006 Pacifica Group Consultancy Inc.