Ever canceled the next sales meeting because you just didn’t know what to talk about?
Or, possibly worse, have you ever gone into a sales meeting you organized without any idea of what you would say?
Managing a sales team involves more than making sure the numbers are up. You have to spend time with your sales reps, help them stay motivated, and train and encourage them. If you’re struggling to do this, your sales meetings are the best place to start.
Look for ways to ensure you're using your salespeople's time effectively. Make sure they know what to expect with a sales meeting agenda--and choose a meeting time that works for everyone.
Then, use these sales meeting ideas to bring your team together, increase team performance, and drive productivity in a fun way.
12 Best Sales Team Meeting Ideas to Keep Your Team Performing at Their Best
New sales managers often try to come up with unique and innovative ideas for a sales meeting. But managing sales teams isn't an exercise in being creative: Your job is to help your team improve and excel. Start with ideas that are proven to be effective.
You don’t need to do something extraordinary at every weekly sales meeting to keep your team happy and motivated—in fact, the thing that will keep your reps happy and motivated is if you help them be more successful. Find what works consistently for you as a manager and for your team, and you’ll get consistent results.
So, look through these meeting ideas for your sales team, and test what works to motivate your reps.
1. Share Your Wins
Did you close an awesome deal? Did a newer sales representative land their first big account? If you want to keep your team motivated, they need to know their work is appreciated. When your team can come together and share their wins, they’ll get that gold sticker of approval we all love, and will feel motivated to keep trying their best.
How to: A win can be anything from successfully closing a deal to overcoming an obstacle or even just accomplishing a certain number of phone calls in a day. It's a good idea to have both results-wins (deals closed, revenue generated, etc) and activity-wins (number of dials made, emails sent, etc). Help the whole team feel comfortable sharing wins that are big or small by asking specific questions, such as:
- What’s one thing you accomplished this week that made you feel proud of yourself?
- Share a moment when you did something you thought you couldn’t.
- Tell us something that put a smile on your face this week.
- What sales strategies worked best for you this week?
2. Share Your Challenges
Having trouble getting a follow-up? Unsure how to position a new product? Hypothetical situations are great for training, but sharing real-world challenges can help your team feel more united in their efforts.
Your reps are overcoming obstacles every day. As they share the challenges they’ve faced and how they’re working to get past them, the whole team can contribute their own experiences with similar challenges. This brings the team together and encourages reps to learn from each other.
What's more, this can be a great source of ideas for your sales documentation. For example, let's assume one of your team members shares a specific way of handling a particular sales objection that worked really well—and is likely to work well for other prospects as well—update your objection management document so that the knowledge becomes institutionalized.
How to: Invite the team to share a challenge they’re struggling with, or a challenge they were able to overcome and how they did so.
3. Have a Career-Goal-Setting Discussion
As part of sales management, you should help your team advance in their sales career. Otherwise, they’ll start to feel stagnant and will probably start looking for other opportunities.
A great sales meeting idea for career development is to talk about the path your salespeople want to take, and how they’re taking steps toward their goals.
How to: Have the team open up about their goals for the future. If your team is shy, start them off by sharing your own goals or your journey to becoming a sales manager.
Offer specific KPIs they can focus on improving and provide feedback on how to get there.
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Never force anyone to participate, but these open discussions can motivate reps to continue working hard to reach their career goals, and will also show them that you’re invested in their success as people, not just as part of your team.
4. Role Play Pitches and Objection Management Techniques
Of course, no list of sales meeting ideas would be complete without roleplaying and mock sales calls. While some reps may roll their eyes at the idea of another roleplay session, these can be super-valuable sessions to help your team perfect their sales pitch and objection management skills.
How to: Review existing sales enablement content, like cold call scripts, talk tracks, email templates, or battle cards. Talk about what’s working and what’s not for your team. Then, pair your reps into teams and have them start roleplaying. Keep the atmosphere light, and let your reps have fun with it. When they’re laughing, they’ll be learning better.
5. Host an Expert Speaker
While not something you can do every week, hosting an expert speaker to come and talk to the group is a great way to spice up your sales meetings.
This expert can come and talk about a specific part of the sales process where you see your reps hitting a roadblock, about the sales industry, or the current state of affairs in the main industry of your customers.
How to: Talk to sales experts in your network and see who would be willing to spend 15 minutes talking to your team. After they finish, spend the rest of the sales meeting discussing what was mentioned by the expert and how your team can apply their advice and knowledge.
6. Watch Video Training Materials
If you’re having trouble finding an expert speaker, a fantastic alternative sales meeting idea is to watch videos from sales experts that will help train and hone their skills.
How to: There are plenty of internet shows, podcasts, and more from sales pros around the world. These can help your team improve sales skills, learn new strategies, and ultimately close more deals.
Pro tip: Check out the Close Call Show, our very own series helping B2B sales reps and managers work together to close more deals.
7. Invite Other Team Members to Join
Sales should never be done in a silo. And while you as a manager may have more contact with different departments, it can be hugely beneficial for your reps to have the context that comes from talking to other teams.
How to: Talk to managers on other teams, especially Product, Marketing, and Customer Success and Support. These team members can come talk to your reps about upcoming projects or promotions, the product roadmap, new goals, and how the sales team fits into the company as a whole.
8. Invite a Customer to Come and Tell Their Story to the Team (or Visit Them)
Your sales team spends their days talking to prospects and buyers who are interested in purchasing your product. But how often do they get to hear about the later results of their efforts?
Inviting happy and successful customers to talk to your sales team can help remind them why they’re doing the work they do and motivate them to continue selling because their work really benefits the customers they close. If you want to take it even one step further: go out and visit your customers.
You'll witness your customers at work while using the product you sold them, and talk with them about their workflow, what they like about your solution, and what they struggle with. This will help you build a much deeper understanding of them—and in turn help you understand prospects like them better.
How to: Talk to your Customer Success team, as they’ll probably have a better idea of who would be a good candidate for this. Then, invite the customer to come and talk about their story after dealing with the sales team. What benefits have they seen from the purchase? How does your product help them succeed?
9. Brainstorm New Ideas for Difficult Parts of the Sales Process
Whether you’re building new sales enablement content, working out a more optimized sales process, or tailoring your automated sales sequences, working with your team to test and brainstorm new ideas can be as helpful as it is motivational.
Nobody likes being handed a process from ‘management’ that is required to be followed to the letter. But when your team has input on how things are done, they’ll feel more motivated to use the processes you put in place. Plus, with their in-the-trenches knowledge of prospects and customers, the resulting collateral will ultimately be better for the whole team.
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How to: Schedule a sales meeting to talk about which pieces of the sales process are more difficult. Focus on your sales collateral and any automated processes. What’s breaking? Where are leads falling out of the sales pipeline? Then, brainstorm as a team about which changes could be made, and work together to test and report on those changes.
10. Discuss the Best and Worst Calls of the Week Over Lunch
Some days are full of great sales calls that run smoothly. Other days, it seems like everyone you call is in a foul mood. Talking about the great and bad calls can help your reps feel like they’re not alone in their struggles, and they can give each other tips and advice to improve.
But you’re probably wondering: why do this over lunch? Because sharing a meal while talking about the week ensures this stays a casual discussion. Nobody feels like they’re about to get shamed for a bad call. At the same time, it gives your team the opportunity to share ideas on what could’ve gone better.
How to: First (and probably most importantly), book the lunch! After that, let your team know you’ll be discussing the week’s calls as part of this lunch, and to come prepared with at least one good call and one bad call to share. Never make your reps feel bad about a negative call, but encourage the whole team to share their ideas and suggestions with each other.
11. Play Sales Training Games to Build Teamwork
For sales training ideas for meetings, don’t overlook the benefits of playing games together. This kind of interactive sales training can help your team laugh and learn together.
Gamifying your training also has another positive effect: it builds a spirit of healthy competition within your team. When you use incentives like bonuses, awards or clever celebrations, you can build an atmosphere of competition that benefits everyone.
How to: Try different sales training games, like sales Jeopardy!, gamified cold calls, or peer knowledge sharing. Another easy way to build healthy competition is to use a sales leaderboard, which gives the whole team more transparency on each other’s activities and increases motivation. Here’s what Close’s built-in sales leaderboard looks like:
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12. Have Top Performers Host a Masterclass
Your top-performing reps are at the top of the leaderboard for a reason. What makes them so good at what they do?
That’s probably what the rest of your team would like to know as well. So, have your best reps quickly present some of their top tips.
Not only will this help the whole team, but it’s a great way to train reps to advance in their careers.
How to: Ask your top performers to host a 10 or 15-minute masterclass on the piece of the sales process they feel most comfortable in. Keep these short and to the point, with one specific aspect of sales to focus on.
Bonus Sales Meeting Idea: Pipeline Review
This is one our sales team here at Close uses. Once a week, they get together and see where deals are in the process. There's no real meeting agenda; rather they just review current deals and where they are in the process.
This sales meeting idea gives newer salespeople a chance to ask for advice in a low-stakes setting and soak up strategies from senior sales professionals. It also ensures everyone is on the same page so no hot lead fall through the cracks.
How to: Host a weekly or monthly meeting with your sales team. Depending on the size of your sales team, this might be the entire team or those who focus on different verticles or locations.
Review where deals are in the sales process, and what deals closed in the previous week. If reviewing the pipeline is short, consider adding this as an agenda item to another meeting.
Best Sales Meeting Themes by Category
Looking for a fantastic theme for your sales kickoff meeting? This is a big event for your team, and you want to make sure you’re getting the right message across. Start by choosing a meeting time that works for everyone and creating an agenda. That will ensure everyone knows what to expect. Then, test one of these themes and see if they vibe with your company culture.
We’ve collected some great themes for sales kickoff meetings, based on these six categories:
- Motivational
- Growth and expansion
- Team building
- Training
- Celebratory
- Fun
Motivational
When you’re looking to inspire and motivate your team, you’ll need a sales meeting theme that speaks to your team and tells them they’re ready to take on anything.
Here are some ideas:
- Playing to win: Used by Behr Paint in 2019, this theme is great for high-powered sales teams who are excited to give their best.
- No limits: If you want to make your team feel like anything is possible, this theme used by Occidental Petroleum in 2019 is a great option.
- Pit stop: Does your team need to be refueled? This theme can remind them of the fast-paced race car pit stops and how it gets the drivers ready to do their best on the track.
- Get it done: Use this sales meeting theme to motivate your team to eat those difficult tasks for breakfast.
Growth and Expansion
When setting new goals, heading into new markets, or growing your sales team, the right sales meeting theme can help prepare your team for growth and expansion.
Here are some ideas:
- Dive in the deep end: For budding sales teams who are expanding into new markets and areas, this theme is a great way to tell them it’s time to go all in.
- Charting our course: If you’ve got some big announcements about the path of the company, this is a great theme.
- All systems go: This theme reminds reps that they have everything they need to close deals.
- Our journey to the top: Working your way up in the market is tough nowadays, and this theme can help your team focus on the steps in that journey and how they individually fit in.
Team Building
If your sales meeting is focused on team building, these sales meeting theme ideas can help your team get into the right mindset:
- Together we can: Focusing on the fact that the whole team is involved in success is an important part of building your team’s unity and strength.
- As one, we win: Remind reps that working together is key to closing deals with this theme.
- We got this: Believing you can is half the battle. Use this theme to assure your reps that they can accomplish their goals.
- Real teams win together: This team-spirit theme was used by Campbells Soups in 2019, and is a great sales meeting theme example for team building.
- Get to know each other better: Sales teams that work together close more deals. If your team is newish or has added new members, icebreakers can be a great way to build camaraderie.
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Training
When your meeting is all about training and leveling-up skills, these themes are great options:
- Elevate your game: Used by Allied Solutions as a sales kickoff meeting theme in 2019, this theme is a great option for sales meetings focused on training and skill development.
- Build for our future: If your team isn’t keen on training, remind them with this theme that training isn’t just for today—it’s for their future.
- Breaking the barrier: This theme acknowledges that times are tough and your team is facing their own struggles. But you’re here to break through those barriers to success.
Celebratory
Ready to celebrate that big win? Use these celebratory sales meeting themes to get your party on with your team.
- From challengers to champions: Is your business a rising underdog? This great theme highlights how you’ve grown and where you’re headed.
- Above and beyond: Celebrate your team’s achievements with this theme, focused on how they did more than was expected and the fantastic results that followed.
- Pack leaders: Your team aren’t followers—they’re born leaders. This theme highlights that.
- Knockout: Looking to highlight how you’ve recently outpaced a top competitor? This theme is a great way to pump up the team and remember how you’ve beat the competition.
Fun
It’s never a bad idea to add some humor to your sales meetings. Here are some funny sales meeting themes you can swipe:
- Don’t Stop Believin’: A classic song with a motivational message, sure to put a smile on your reps’ faces.
- Mission:(almost)Impossible: Heading into a new year or about to come against a big struggle? This theme adds some humor while recognizing the tough times ahead, and preps your team to work harder than ever.
- Stand by me: Remind your team that standing together is better than working in a silo with this musical theme.
Use These Sales Meeting Ideas to Get Your Team Excited About Meetings
Never thought your team could look forward to that weekly sales huddle? Well, using the sales meeting topics we’ve discussed above, you can make your meetings interactive, interesting, and motivational for the whole team.
Don't forget to record the meetings or have someone take meeting notes--especially if you're swapping tips and strategies. Those can be added to your sales training materials later!
Looking for more resources to up your game as a sales manager? Download our Sales Management Toolkit for free:
