‘Tis the season for your SKO or remote sales meeting!
In 2019, when Buffer asked remote workers about their greatest challenges, 17% answered “collaborating and/or communication.”
Thus, it should come as no surprise that at a time that about 1/3 of the US population is working from home, better remote communication is a priority. Especially when it comes to something as important as a sales meeting.
So, what can we do to improve our communication in a remote sales meeting?
The answer, according to this fantastic article at HubSpot, starts with preparing more thorough meeting agendas and taking better meeting notes.
Let’s talk about meeting agendas
Depending on your personality, meeting agendas may be your BFF, or they might seem like an unnecessary burden. You already know what you need to accomplish; why write it all down?
I’m sorry to tell you, if you’re the latter type of person, research says you should probably change your tune. Especially if you’re working remotely. And especially during the pandemic.
The reason? Because the more isolated you are, the worse your memory probably is, research says. Not to mention that putting an agenda down on paper may also give you insight into other team members who’d be helpful on the call, specific concerns the prospects might have, and resources you may need to keep at your fingertips.
Not only should you write down an agenda, but, according to the Harvard Business Review, you should:
- Get suggested agenda topics from your team (this is one place where sales, marketing, and customer service can work together for better results)
- Pick topics that impact everyone on the call (not focusing on just one person’s pain points)
- Tell the team how to prepare for the meeting (if you’ve got more than one sales pro on the phone, who’s responsible for what? If marketing is in the Zoom room, what’s their role?)
- Delegate leadership for each topic discussion as needed
- Review and modify the agenda in real-time before you start (if your prospects came in with specific requests, make sure they’re factored in)
- End the meeting with a debrief within your team (How did we do? Can we improve our sales meeting process in any way?)
Taking the right kind of notes
Now, once you have your agenda, everyone knows what’s expected of them, and when you’re in the meeting, the other important piece of this communication puzzle is notes. Because if our collective memories are suffering from isolation, we shouldn’t be relying on them as a record of important meetings.
According to HubSpot, things you should be writing down in your meeting notes include:
- Who’s in attendance (and who needs to be brought into the loop after the fact)
- The questions prospects ask during the meeting (and comments they make)
- Decisions made on the call
- Action items and tasks that come out of the meeting
- Feedback from the prospects (is there anything we can do better in future?)
- Time, day, and other details for any follow-up meetings
It’s also helpful to have note-takers keep an eye out for small fixes or things they want to revisit in the future, noting if they spot an error in the presentation, for example, or where to find a video resource they want to re-watch.
Meeting recordings can be a lifesaver
Whether you want the sales team to learn from and improve on their meetings or you just want another record of client questions and concerns, recording meetings can be a real boon to the note-taking, memory-boosting process.
If you don’t want to clutter up your servers with too many recordings, you can set parameters around how long your system will keep them before deleting. In many cases, this can be automated, with an email sent to the recording’s owner before deletion so that they can rescue any files they still need.
And if you feel like your remote sales meetings aren’t killing it lately? Let’s chat about how we can help.
