Team Building Ideas for Sales Meetings

The Value of Team Building Ideas for Sales Meetings

While young salespeople may be competitive and prefer to work alone, experienced salespeople know they can’t do everything by themselves. No single person can know everything about all your products and your entire sales process. Savvy sales managers use sales meetings and sales training to continuously improve the skills of their sales team. Using team building ideas for sales meetings gives your salespeople a tool to overcome obstacles they can’t handle on their own.

The normal sales cycle is full of potential obstacles that may lead to a delay or even ignoring a potential customer. These obstacles may include facing a big competitor for the sale, an unsatisfied client, a lack of technical knowledge or issues getting past gatekeepers at the target company. When salespeople learn that they can reach out to other team members to overcome obstacles, the sales cycle is less likely to stall.

The real value comes when salespeople realize that they can reach out to the rest of their team for help with specific questions or to get access to specialized skills that they lack. Salespeople have access to more knowledge and perform better when they collaborate in the workplace.

 

Dos and Don’ts of Sales Meetings

If you are an experienced sales manager, you probably know all the “dos” and “don’ts” of producing a great sales meeting.

1. Do keep the agenda moving.
2. Don’t let the meeting degenerate into a complaint-fest.
3. Do focus on creativity, prospecting and presenting skills.
4. Don’t overdo supply chain or service bottleneck issues.
5. Do focus on new updates of product or service information.

But, there’s one more area that’s becoming critical for successful sales meetings – team building. Let’s learn why.

Most Sales People Now Operate Remotely & Virtually; They Benefit the Most from Team Building

Nobody is coming into the office anymore. In fact, the joke is that IBM now stands for “I’m By Myself.”

That means fewer shared “water cooler” and “copier” conversations where vital “tribal knowledge” is shared. Sharing this information through intimate conversations to break down barriers is still critical, so more thought and planning has to go into structured yet relaxed team building activities.

Dispersed Teams Operate in Culture Vacuums

Shared organizational values are still important, but how does management share them if sales teams are so spread out, and there are fewer in-person interactions?

Remember, you can’t effectively communicate corporate values in a PowerPoint slide. You have to showcase, live, and portray them. When management works side-by-side in a team building exercise with the people that report to them directly (slicing onions or breading chicken), values are exposed for everyone to see. New life is breathed into the culture vacuum.

Team Building Encourages Collaboration: The Essence of Modern Deal-Making

Increasingly, sales are made collaboratively. Between inside and outside sales. Between marketing and sales. Between regions. Across borders. The key to winning shared sales is mutual trust, respect, and familiarity among the participants. How do you engender that beyond drinking at the hotel bar?

A team building challenge is the perfect way to build trust and make co-workers more comfortable asking one another for help or simply following up on shared tasks and responsibilities.

Team Building Improves Social Relations between Managers and Millennials

Last but not least, as the workforce changes, there can often be a social gap between senior management and the younger workforce generation. This tends to lead to a breakdown in communication on the professional side of things as well.

At Team Building with Taste, it’s clear to us that millennials like social cultures. We’ve seen first-hand how team building helps improve social relationships between older and younger employees who were resigned to believing they had little to nothing in common.

The Right Mixture of Structure and Spontaneity is Key for Sales Team Building

So what’s the best kind of team building for a sales group? It’s surely not the hokey “ice breakers” we are all familiar with, or the overly-contrived outdoor activities. Team “activities,” such as Top Golf or bowling are fine, but fall just above drinks-at-the-hotel bar in their ability to inspire people and meet the cultural objectives noted above. Maybe it’s time for new and effective team building ideas.

At Team Building with Taste, we offer a culinary team building curriculum written by marketing and sales professionals. Are the team building challenges interesting and the food good? Absolutely! Just check out our menus. Are the events fun? Take a look at some of our testimonials. But, what really sets us apart from other team building programs is the right mix of structure and informality and the fact that everyone feels comfortable in a kitchen. The team building comes naturally and does not feel contrived. That’s the perfect recipe for a successful sales team building.

Here’s What Sales People Think of Culinary Team Building

We have had hundreds of sales groups through our program. Here’s what a few of them have said:

“We’re sales people. We’re naturally competitive. If you want to get us engaged and motivated,  make it a competition.”

“After your event, my sales team went from a group of strangers to ones that frequently reach out to each other for support and advice. I also was able to see each individual’s leadership style and how they handle pressure, which has helped me to ensure that they are working on the right projects.”

“My sales manager thinks my personality is the key to my sales success. But tonight I gathered the inventory, found the resources, optimized the schedule and brought the project in on time and under budget—even if it only was baking cornbread.”

With a fun, culinary cooking competition and a delicious menu, your sales team members’ individual personalities will shine while bringing the team together as a whole. Your team will build trust with each other and have fun at the same time.

Participate in an Outside Sales Meeting at Team Building with Taste

Our Dallas and Atlanta team building facilities can handle both your sales meeting and your team building event, and our team building comes naturally and does not feel contrived. That’s the perfect recipe for a successful sales team building event.

Book your team building event online, or call us at 678-915-2815.