The ideal 1 to 1 meeting with one of your staff

So if you get it wrong, then the reality is you're going to end up having a relationship that doesn't go anywhere, it's going to clash and all that's going to end up meaning it's going to hurt you and hurt them.

So if you want to ensure that you run the ideal one to one session with one of your sales team, these are the things that to consider and putting in place to make that meeting become a success.

I've had hundreds of one to ones with salespeople over the years and these are the things that I've learned that enable me to get the most in the conversation to ensure I'm happy and that they are too.

So let's dive into it and find out what are the key things that you can do to make an ideal one to one sales meeting happen.

So point number one is this.

I encourage if I'm making sure that I'm doing a one to one meeting with someone that I hold that meeting.

I see a lot of managers nowadays who will put meetings in the diary and then the meeting doesn't happen because they then focus on other priorities or something else comes up.

And the challenge and the issue that with that is that it sends a really bad signal to your salesperson that you're, they're not important enough.

Now the reality is of course things will come up, especially if you've got a regular slot.

Maybe it's once a month at a certain time that things can change.

And of course meetings with clients and other things can come up that can maybe get in the way of that time frame.

But really try and make sure if you can't make the time that you've said that you set a different time and date and commit to that.

A lot of salespeople get frustrated if the manager they've had a conversation or try to have a conversation with the end continually changes it, they feel demotivated, they don't feel that they got any engagement and it just feels that they're on their own.

So make sure you get a date and time and then stick to it.

The point number two is this.

Ask them to prepare for what the salesperson wants to achieve from the meeting.

Now you might find, for example, if you've got a salesperson that's a little bit negative or doesn't really want to have the meeting in the first place, they might struggle with this.

But maybe that says you a lot about the salesperson themselves.

But one of the things I would encourage the people I'm having conversations with to do is to say, look, we've got 30 minutes or we've got an hour in the diary.

I want to maximize this from your perspective.

What are the things that I can share with you or that I can help you with or that we want to cover in the next period of time in order to make this effective for you, in order to help you achieve more, to, to do your job more effectively, to get better results.

And ask them to prepare for that.

Ask them to be able to prepare.

What are the things that they want to talk about?

What are the topics?

Especially if they can prepare and they want to talk about a new product that's come in, it may well be that if you don't not aware of that when you come into the meeting, you can't then help them and then it becomes an overaction to do list that could get lost.

So ask them to prepare and to give you maybe three days or five days before the meeting the list of what they want to cover in that session.

And make sure it's like any other meeting.

It has an agenda and an outline of what it is that they want to go through and what success would look like for them from that meeting.

What do they want to leave that meeting?

Feeling and thinking that makes them think, yeah, this has been a worthwhile use of their time.

So point number two is ask them to prepare.

Point number three is this, build some personality and relationships initially at the start of the meeting.

You know, one of the things that a lot of sales managers unfortunately do is they focus on the task at hand, which is the achieve the number and making things happen, which is fair.

But they forget that ultimately they've got a human being that's doing that job.

And so one of the first things that I will always look to try and do when having a conversation with someone is try and build that, you know, that initial rapport or remember something they've done.

So for example, if they told me that they were going, you know, especially at the time of year where we are right now, which is, you know, new new year, I might, if they were, if they told me in a previous conversation they were going to a family member for Christmas, I might say, hey, how was your Christmas with such and such a family member?

Or what did you guys get up to?

Or remember details of their wife or husband's name, or I might deal with their kids names or their dog's names.

So I can actually remember to be personal with that person on the first part of the call.

And I want to use and Again, we don't want to spend too much 25 minutes talking through what they did over the new year period.

But I want to ensure that they understand that I know them as a person and I understand what's driving them in their world.

And I'm looking out for the signs and signals as to what's going on.

Because if that person is struggling in their personal life, their work life isn't going to be any better or it's going to affect their work life.

And that's the reality.

And you might say, or someone might say, well, that's not my job.

They've got to sort that out.

That's not true.

The reality is people's personal lives affects their work lives.

So spend a bit of time trying to be a, build those relationships and remember things for that person.

And also then ask them how they're doing and what's going on and what's getting in the way.

It could be a reason as to why they're not getting the results that you want them to.

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Now back to the podcast.

Point number four, which I always use, is try and set the stage, you know, in the agenda, but also in the first part of the meeting.

Once you've then sort of, you know, gone through some of those initial familiarities to recover, confirm what you want to achieve, that this is a positive meeting, that to try and get you to a position where you can, you've got a target of X over the course of the next six months.

I want to talk with you as to how we can make that happen.

What do we need to do to get to that stage?

So try and recap some of the goals, some of the targets that that salesperson has got.

Maybe in a recent appraisal, you've given them some specific objectives that you wanted them to hit or Some skills that you'd like to develop.

The session today, we're going to look and see how you're moving towards developing that area.

And what it does is it sets the stage, it sets the scene that you're going to be a positive conversation to try and help them get the way they want to.

You know, I've never met a salesperson that doesn't want to be successful, that doesn't want to achieve, that doesn't want to earn commission.

They all feel that, but it's just they sometimes feel that the world's against them to do that.

And we'll come on to that in a moment as part of the one to one.

But if you have those type of conversations that are positive, that are upbeat, that are focused on the person, but they set the scene to talk about the specific goals that they've got and how we can make these things happen, you're going to put in position the person in the right frame of mind in a positive state to try and make something happen rather than talking about the negatives and oh, this isn't happened and this isn't working if you can get them to focus on what's going right and what's working or what you can do to it, to to do things better rather than moaning about what's not in place at the moment.

So the next point I will try and then do would be I would try and then review the current metrics and performance of that person.

So what I might say to someone is let's have a look at the things that have happened over the course of the last couple of weeks or last month or last six weeks.

Talk me through the deals that you've currently got available at the moment.

Talk me through the new meetings that you've had, talk me through the prospecting that you're doing at the moment and how that's going all.

Or I might say, let's have a look at the different deals you've got in the pipeline.

What are the top three deals you've got at each stage in the pipeline?

And let's talk through those deals and see if we can spot some ideas or thoughts, or I can help in any way to try and move those deals forward and to help them be in a position where we can get them to the next stage.

So what I'm trying to do is to try and look at things, look at data in an engaging way with the person and make them understand and own that data.

It does two things for me as a sales manager on a One to one, the first thing is that it means that I'm interested in them and interested in seeing their deal so I get insight and knowledge on what's happening.

But secondly, and also you could argue this is just as important, good salespeople know their deals, they know their numbers, they know what's going on within the accounts that they've got.

And what they're looking for is support to help make me make the deal happen.

And if you've got a salesperson that doesn't understand what's going on at a certain stage, or doesn't have enough detail, or doesn't know the person in a company, or doesn't know what the next action is, or doesn't know what the next step is or what the pain point that's driving the buyer to even look at the solution, then they've got a bigger problem.

So it enables you to get a sense as a sales manager whether they're giving you BS and therefore there's problems there or whether they're all over their numbers and all over the data within that.

So review the current performance and metric information.

This might take 10, 15 minutes, it can take longer if you want to go through every deal.

But, but maybe ask them to go through the top three deals at each stage of their pipeline.

What's going to happen in order to move that through to the next stage and start to try and identify where you can spot where there are messages that have been sent or communications that have been put out that weren't quite right.

And you can maybe suggest that they can make some amendments to an email or maybe there's a follow up proposal they've done that.

You might want to then give them some ideas on how they can reach out to that person afterwards.

Go through individual deals, but try and review this and try and see how this matches against their target.

So again, if I've got a salesperson that's got a target of let's say 100k over the course of the next 3 months or next 6 months, I might look at the deals they've got and look at the value of those deals and say, okay, let's look at what are we going to do to hit that 100k?

You've got four deals at 40k here and three deals at 30.

Okay, let's look at which one of these we can move forward with.

So you've got ways in which to try and show the salesperson how they can take the right action to achieve their ultimate goals.

But make sure they know you know the numbers and that you're doing what I call sniffer dog.

So you're digging into different things that happen.

You're asking questions.

What's happening there?

When's the decision made?

Who, who's the decision maker on that perspective, how will we know the budget's not been pulled from that project?

What makes it so important they do this right now?

Asking those questions as a sales manager means that your salesperson is going to think, wow, I can't just, you know, bullshit.

My, my manager here, they're going to ask, they're going to know what's going on.

And if they don't know the answers, then you can say, hey, you need to go back and find those answers before we come back to the next session or before you start submitting it for a forecast.

Or if they don't know, they can say, look, let's work on how we can find that out.

And that's where you can provide mentoring or coaching or support to do that.

So review the metrics and the performance in a, in a structured way.

So one of the things that, you know, I always know with salespeople, and I've never met a salesperson, I was one for a long time.

There are always an issue, there's always a challenge, there's always a problem.

So spend five to five minutes or so, maybe 10 minutes or so, listening and trying to understand the challenges they're facing.

You know, I do think good ultimate.

You know, I've done a podcast recently on Ultimate Salespeople.

Really great salespeople don't blame.

They are accountable.

They don't blame other parts of the company or customers or other situations happening.

They take ownership.

But they might have some challenges that are going on.

You know, we face an issue with project not being able to deliver, or there's a marketing issue with the reputation as a result of a trust pilot review or something like that.

Or it may well be they've got a problem with their car or, you know, going to get to it through to a decision maker.

So try and address the challenges.

Try and ask them to share what are the things that are stopping you from achieving things, how can we work to address those?

And there are some that are going to be in your control as a sales manager.

Maybe there's some things around timings or where to focus their energy, you know what they're doing.

And there's some things that may be out of your control, which you can maybe, you know, depending on how serious they are, you can then bring them up into Other meetings or you can maybe have those discussions with that person, say, look, we can't change this now.

How do we achieve what we want to, knowing that that's a factor, but give some air time to their challenges.

The reason we do this later on in the meeting rather than the start is so that we don't make the whole meeting and board or moan fest.

I've seen sales meetings, meetings that literally turn in from day moment one into a, into a moan fest and before you know it, everyone's feeling down and negative about things and we want to make sure that's not happening.

So we want to be focusing on the positives, but we also want to be able to make sure we understand that there are challenges and we know how to address them.

So the final couple of points around a one to one with a salesperson that I think are really important are the next one is, you know, part of this, maybe for 5, 10 minutes of the session is focus on growth and development.

You know, ask them the questions, what are the things we need to do to put in place to help you achieve your ultimate goals over the short, medium and long term?

You know, what, what can we put in place to help you move forward and develop as a person?

What are the skills that you're missing?

Is it skills in a product area or service area, a knowledge area, or you need to then need some extra time with, with, with customer services, for example, to understand how a process operates.

What are the things that they need to do to develop to become better at what they do?

Maybe it's a, maybe they need sales training.

By the way, if you know, if you need, they need sales training or they need some skills development, hey, we know someone that can help you there, wink, wink.

But the reality is maybe they need some support in other areas or they're not sure, especially if they may be doing prospecting where they're not sure what to do and how to do it.

I was with a client the other month who their sales team were great, but they were doing something and they just didn't feel like they had a clear plan as to putting things in place.

So they came to me.

We've built them a sales blueprint and plan and then I've got clarity on what they're doing and how they're doing it.

So the reality is focus on what it is they need to grow to develop.

And if you get someone that says, you know, they don't want to grow, develop again, it maybe should send a few warning signals to you.

So even if they say no, I'm all good.

Maybe ask them the question, okay, what are the areas that you're sensing in the industry or in your role that we need to give you some support for?

Or maybe I can.

It doesn't mean say you have to pay for training.

It might mean that you can find them a course, you can take a note down of it and find them an article or an online YouTube video for example that can share some insights for them.

So the key thing is what are the areas that they feel they want to use to grow and develop and we want to try and spot those so that we can motivate them to see that there's a plan to develop and improve in the longer term.

You know, we want, you know, everyone you know, of course we've got to focus on the short term stuff to do business now.

But we also got to take time to sharpen our saw as salespeople and making sure that they see you understand that is key.

And look, you know this, the final thing for me around a sales one to one that I think is really important is talk about the next steps and what the close and what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks.

Make sure there's clarity around alignment as to who's doing actions.

Make sure you ask the question, look, have we covered what we wanted to or what have we not covered that you wanted to?

What have we not covered that will stop you achieving your goals and get clarity on?

Okay, so the plan from here is you're going to do this, I'm going to provide you with this, I will get this done by this timeframe and then deliver on those actions and make sure you hold them to account for doing the same thing so that they can make those things happen that they said they would.

The reality is if you can even plan the next date for your one to one or plan, maybe you're going to go out and help them on site, for example with a client or a meeting, maybe put those elements in place so you've got a clarity and a plan on going forward so that that person and link those to the goals that they have.

So you've got to target it.

This, what we're going to do is do this, this and this.

You're going to do this to then see where we are in a week's time to see how we're going on that plan.

So what it does is it gives people clarity around what's going to happen as the next stage so they can leave fit in Buzzing in a position where they feel supported and informed as a result of that meeting.

So, look, you know, sales management isn't easy.

There are a lot of people that do it really well.

And of course, there are times, I'm not saying you have to be soft to people.

There are times when salespeople do, you know, tell you stuff that isn't true and you have to have maybe more difficult conversations with them, but be consistent, you know, listen, you know, you.

Again, like sales is like, you know, sales management is like sales itself.

We need to listen more than we speak.

Hear them out, hear what's going on in their world.

Ask those questions again, those how and what questions.

You know, if they've got a challenge, what do you want me to do about it?

How am I supposed to result?

How can we resolve this?

Use those how and what questions to really find out what's going on inside their world, in their head and get them to commit to an approach and really be positive of what they can achieve and what's realistic.

Too many of the time people put things in place that are never going to happen and sometimes challenge that, but challenge it in a positive way so that they can support them to achieve the goals that they want to.

And if you can do this, and of course, if you've got 5, 10 salespeople in your team, you've got to do this in a number of occasions, it's going to take your time.

But if you can do the things that I've mentioned by getting them to prepare and understand them as people and really set the stage and understand how they, what they, you know, what they're doing is linked to their goals, you can be in a far better position to get more results from it.

That's going to work for them and for you.

More importantly, as a sales manager, when you're impressed for the sales numbers.

So sorry to interrupt the podcast, but if you've got a sales issue at the moment that's really hacking you off, challenge me.

I'll help you solve it.

Reach out to me.

Drop an email at hello Amesworth Business and I will help you solve your sales challenge.

There's not one I don't think I can't handle.

There's no sales issue that I can't resolve.

I've seen them all over my career.

I want to help you solve yours.

So reach out to me.

Let's make sure we handle your sales challenges and fix them so you can get back to smiling again.

Now back to the podcast.

So hope that's been Helpful and given you some insights on how to have a more effective sales.

One to one, try it out.

Let me know how you got on.

Put it in the comments section if you try.

If you've got other methods that work for you in the sessions that you do with the meetings you have, let me know as well.

I'd love to know what's working for you.

But trying these methods, certainly using these methods and this approach has worked for me in my career with salespeople that we hire and gets me to get the results that I have.

And I hope we can do the same thing for you as well.

So as I always do, I always finish the podcast on an inspirational story and I wanted to do a story this week of a lady called Alexandra Panayulu.

Apologies if I've got Alexandra's name wrong.

Alexandra Panayouli.

And Alexandra is an ultra endurance athlete and one of the things I always look at, she's also a TED speaker.

She's done a non stop 400 kilometer solo endurance run.

So I was thinking about this the other day.

You know, 400 kilometers, like 250 miles solo endurance run.

You know, I think it blows my mind that someone like Alex is Alexander is able to do that and to show that courage and the mindset to achieve those sort of results.

I think it's incredible.

She still carried on doing what she was doing and she overcame her challenges.

And I think that people like this are extraordinary.

People that do incredible things are just an inspiration.

So yeah, as I say, she's done some incredible.

So incredible achievements.

And when I think about people like that and how she's overcome adversity and challenges to deal with what she has and to maybe healthy and be, be a speaker now as she is that I think it's an inspirational story to achieve Anything that we can, we can take from that.

So have a look at Alex Panayotu and her story.

I think it's inspirational.

I think it can help you focus on what you want to achieve in the future.

And as I always say, with these things, especially when you're having a bad day or things not going your way, you think about people like that, they've had to run 400 km in one go.

Wow.

Maybe put our moans and challenges into perspective.

So that's it for this week.

Thanks so much for listening.

I hope you've enjoyed the podcast.

Hope you're going to run better sales one to ones from here.

Hope you've enjoyed it.

If you have, please tell other people about it so we can help other sales managers get brilliant meetings.

Have brilliant meetings and great results.

But until next time, I'll see you then and have a great week.

Stay safe.

Take care.

So thank you so much for listening to this episode.

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