Dan Martell - August 10, 2020


The Perfect Weekly SaaS Sales Meeting Agenda

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Rocket Demo Builder
Top 5 Activities of a Great SaaS Customer Success Manager Why Hiring a Business Coach Was a Game Changer with Elias @ Drift.com - Escape Velocity Show #34

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

183.55

Word count

1,957

Sentence count

96


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dan Martell shares the agenda structure he uses to manage his sales team meetings so that they can hit their quotas and hit their targets on a weekly basis. He talks about why this is so important and why you should implement it in your sales team.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hey there, Dan Martell here,
00:00:01.220 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:03.340 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you
00:00:05.520 the agenda structure to manage your weekly sales meeting.
00:00:10.440 If you're like me and you started off
00:00:12.440 and you hired a salesperson,
00:00:13.960 you use this kind of approach of like hire
00:00:16.020 and hopefully they figure it out, that doesn't work.
00:00:20.100 And what we need is a cadence and a structure
00:00:21.880 and I'll give you all the different agenda items
00:00:24.420 that I use in my weekly sales team meetings
00:00:26.720 to manage millions of dollars of pipeline.
00:00:29.560 I coach literally 100 plus SaaS founders,
00:00:33.640 build their sales team.
00:00:35.100 One of my largest clients have 150 salespeople.
00:00:37.600 They use this exact same format
00:00:39.300 to make sure we create rhythm, routine,
00:00:41.540 and most importantly, revenue.
00:00:43.380 And at the end, I'm gonna share with you
00:00:44.380 how to get access to my Rocket Demo Builder,
00:00:47.420 which is gonna allow you to close deals
00:00:48.820 in half the time at twice the size.
00:00:51.380 Let's get into it.
00:00:59.560 So when I was building my company, Flowtown,
00:01:06.940 we were a venture-backed tech startup out of San Francisco.
00:01:10.300 It was an email marketing application for small businesses.
00:01:13.240 And we decided we're gonna hire some people
00:01:15.200 to talk to customers.
00:01:16.400 It wasn't like a sales process.
00:01:18.800 It was really more of a,
00:01:21.000 hey, we can either just let people go through their trials
00:01:23.900 or just buy our product,
00:01:25.140 but maybe it'd be a good idea
00:01:26.340 if we have a conversation with these people.
00:01:28.460 And it turned out, just by having the conversation,
00:01:31.500 literally my sales training back then as a,
00:01:35.100 you know, I was a 28 when I started that company,
00:01:36.860 was, hey, when they hang up the phone,
00:01:39.920 make sure that they have a better day
00:01:42.100 because you called them.
00:01:43.500 That was like the sales training.
00:01:45.420 And over time, I realized there needs to be more structure,
00:01:48.500 there needs to be talk tracks, there needs to be a flow.
00:01:51.040 And the most important thing I could do for my sales team
00:01:53.920 was to introduce a weekly cadence and structure.
00:01:57.080 Since then, I've built my personal sales teams
00:02:00.060 to incredible efficiency,
00:02:02.620 literally getting them from zero revenue
00:02:05.000 to hitting quota within six to eight weeks.
00:02:07.460 And I use this specific structure
00:02:09.360 to help them nail that every week,
00:02:12.520 including not having to do the meeting anymore,
00:02:14.560 which is the best part.
00:02:15.860 So if you wanna learn to do that, let's get into it.
00:02:17.920 Number one, wins.
00:02:19.320 My favorite thing.
00:02:20.300 All my meetings pretty much start with wins
00:02:21.820 because it's a way to create momentum.
00:02:23.920 It's a way for people to reset the perspective.
00:02:25.980 I think that in life and in business,
00:02:29.080 we can ask ourselves one of two questions.
00:02:31.340 We could say, one, what's right about this situation?
00:02:33.800 Or two, what's wrong about this situation?
00:02:36.560 And I've discovered is if you wanna hire great people
00:02:39.520 that are performers, we wanna let them share
00:02:41.880 what's winning in their world.
00:02:43.880 Because if somebody's not, it's gonna want them
00:02:46.220 to elevate their output to meet that standard of the team.
00:02:51.520 So start off by just saying like three minutes of
00:02:54.240 who's got some wins to share.
00:02:55.980 Number two, pipeline.
00:02:57.620 It is the most important thing that you have some tool.
00:03:00.400 A lot of my clients use HubSpot.
00:03:02.020 Others that are selling more enterprise-y
00:03:04.500 or higher volume or bigger teams will use Salesforce.
00:03:07.200 But I would say a large portion use either a spreadsheet,
00:03:11.420 a whiteboard, or a tool like Pipedrive
00:03:13.620 or even Trello can work.
00:03:15.540 But regardless, you need some tool
00:03:16.860 and you need to review the specific pipeline of stages
00:03:20.820 and deals and value of those stages with your team.
00:03:24.480 And most importantly for me,
00:03:25.680 What I'm looking for, and the tool should do this,
00:03:28.240 is to show who's behind on their follow-up
00:03:30.560 or the amount of activities they should be doing
00:03:32.800 for each stage of those deals.
00:03:35.400 Because to me, if I can just quickly
00:03:37.360 kind of red, green, or yellow know who's on top of it,
00:03:40.260 who's or not, we can address it in the meeting,
00:03:42.020 get them back to a state of higher performance
00:03:44.660 so that they can start hitting their quota.
00:03:47.640 Sales, to me, is very simple.
00:03:49.220 It's activities.
00:03:50.480 It's not having world-class salesmanship.
00:03:53.660 It's literally following a process,
00:03:55.840 being consistent with that process
00:03:57.280 and you will get the results.
00:03:58.680 So we have to manage pipeline.
00:03:59.960 Number three, roadblocks.
00:04:02.180 I think it's important before the meeting starts
00:04:04.520 that you invite everybody on your team
00:04:06.760 to open up the standard.
00:04:08.600 I use a Google Doc with all these agenda items in it
00:04:10.860 and add a list, a bulleted list of roadblocks
00:04:14.400 that they wanna discuss or have questions around
00:04:16.660 so that as a sales manager,
00:04:18.700 I know it's a big question
00:04:19.600 because it's probably just you as the CEO
00:04:21.040 and you're wearing many different hats,
00:04:22.460 but as somebody's leading the sales team,
00:04:24.960 maybe you're doing sales calls
00:04:25.840 and other people are a part of that team,
00:04:27.860 you wanna unblock them.
00:04:29.140 So any roadblocks that might come up,
00:04:30.720 you want them to list them
00:04:32.240 and then provide either some suggestions
00:04:35.240 or some tweaks to your playbook
00:04:37.060 or some recommendations to help them overcome that,
00:04:39.460 some books, ideas, some training
00:04:41.240 that you might've already purchased, et cetera.
00:04:43.340 But have that part of the rhythm.
00:04:45.080 Number four, buyer feedback.
00:04:47.040 I don't like calling clients prospects.
00:04:49.500 I think the word buyer is more interesting.
00:04:52.000 It's somebody, it just, I don't know, I use the word buyer.
00:04:54.920 So buyer feedback is part of our agenda
00:04:56.880 and it's really about asking the sales team
00:04:59.680 who's talking to people, literally three, four, five,
00:05:02.420 six calls a day, doing product demos, discovery calls,
00:05:05.400 making sure that we're incorporating that feedback
00:05:07.760 into our sales process, into our competition battle cards,
00:05:12.480 into the product roadmap,
00:05:14.620 but making sure that there's an item
00:05:16.440 to source that feedback, part of the agenda
00:05:19.420 is gonna transform the value of your sales weekly meetings.
00:05:23.840 Number five, sales metrics.
00:05:25.740 So the metrics are important
00:05:27.220 in regards to individual sales team members' quota.
00:05:31.600 What are their weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals?
00:05:35.200 Are they on track?
00:05:36.220 Where are they at?
00:05:37.060 Ensuring that you look at capacity
00:05:39.820 and your calendar and schedule and follow-up numbers.
00:05:43.340 So whatever the metrics are for your sales motion,
00:05:46.180 because if you have an SMB product,
00:05:47.920 maybe you have a very light touch sales process
00:05:51.160 to a mid-market or an enterprise sales motion,
00:05:55.420 you wanna make sure that you throttle your metrics
00:05:57.560 to match those different sales motions.
00:05:59.560 I have some videos on my YouTube channel
00:06:01.140 if you wanna go search around sales metrics,
00:06:03.880 but having that scorecard, I call it a precision scorecard,
00:06:08.280 where you have the five key metrics for your sales team
00:06:11.260 and maybe individual data points
00:06:13.440 that you're looking per sales rep,
00:06:15.440 it's really gonna allow you to cut through the noise,
00:06:17.660 help people understand if they're on track or not
00:06:19.660 to hit the quota or hit their pipeline goals
00:06:22.100 for the week and the month
00:06:23.660 so that you can make sure you hit your quarterly numbers.
00:06:26.240 Number six, announcements.
00:06:28.060 This is your opportunity to have anything
00:06:31.340 about the sales team or the product roadmap
00:06:34.640 or even your customer success managers
00:06:36.660 announce things to the whole sales team.
00:06:39.120 So for what I like to do is I like to actually invite
00:06:41.680 my CSM to our sales meeting, our customer success manager.
00:06:45.240 That way, if there's any issues,
00:06:47.260 especially around roadblocks or announcements,
00:06:51.180 they can share that directly with the sales team.
00:06:53.740 I never wanna create a situation
00:06:55.860 where marketing and the customer success managers
00:07:00.360 feel like sales is this like rogue team of, you know,
00:07:05.460 hunters and they're out there
00:07:06.780 and they don't really care about systems
00:07:08.460 or process or feedback and you wanna invite them.
00:07:11.220 So I have my marketing lead and my customer success lead
00:07:14.440 on the sales weekly meeting
00:07:16.180 so that they have a voice at the table
00:07:18.460 and they can hear kind of what's being brought up
00:07:21.040 by the team sales reps
00:07:23.140 and also just broadcast announcements
00:07:25.720 on what's going on in the business
00:07:26.880 because often salespeople are just,
00:07:28.960 they're hungry, they're pounding,
00:07:31.000 they're doing the emails, they're dialing for dollars,
00:07:33.580 they're not really paying attention
00:07:35.120 to what's going on in the organization.
00:07:36.900 Number seven, competitors.
00:07:38.760 I think it's important to understand
00:07:40.720 that most people actually don't know what they're doing
00:07:43.120 in their own business strategy.
00:07:44.860 So you shouldn't like monitor your competitors
00:07:47.020 for anything that they're doing
00:07:49.260 and think that they're doing something better.
00:07:50.980 I think you use the competitor feedback
00:07:54.620 to at least be able to bring it up to your team
00:07:57.500 to teach them how to overcome, you know, objections.
00:08:00.680 So if your competitor launches this new module
00:08:02.680 that solves a key issue in your software
00:08:05.580 that you haven't solved yet, how do you answer that?
00:08:09.140 So as a sales manager, you wanna make sure
00:08:11.060 that you create that awareness
00:08:12.860 so they don't get blindsided on a demo call
00:08:15.740 or a discovery call
00:08:16.400 and then have to essentially wing it
00:08:18.740 or make it up or sound uninformed.
00:08:21.040 So competitors is always on there
00:08:22.820 in regards to what people are doing
00:08:24.980 so you can inform your team.
00:08:26.440 And number eight, lastly, is training.
00:08:29.380 One of the most critical things
00:08:31.720 is making sure your team gets brought up to spec
00:08:35.820 on different aspect of your sales process,
00:08:38.860 meaning that if you have a talk track
00:08:41.380 for how to do discovery, how to understand the needs,
00:08:44.720 how to look for a critical event,
00:08:46.020 how to look for the emotional impact,
00:08:47.540 how to deal with objections, how to deal with competitors.
00:08:51.560 You wanna make that part of a training curriculum.
00:08:54.340 These are 10 minute at the end of your sales weekly meeting
00:08:58.040 where you teach all the salespeople,
00:09:00.700 hey, I just wanna talk about dealing with this objection.
00:09:04.180 Here's our protocol, here's the script.
00:09:06.340 Let's role play, everybody does it.
00:09:08.260 It's a quick 10 minute training
00:09:09.540 and it's just part of,
00:09:11.940 and there's other sales training
00:09:12.940 that should be involved in your process,
00:09:14.740 but I just think on the call,
00:09:16.520 it's just a great way to finish the meeting.
00:09:18.620 It gives them a new tool to add to their toolbox
00:09:21.380 and just leaves them feeling with a sense of excitement
00:09:24.640 and confidence to bring to their next set of calls.
00:09:27.700 So quick recap, the specific agenda structure
00:09:30.960 you should be using for your weekly sales meetings.
00:09:33.020 Number one, start with wins.
00:09:34.700 Two, review your pipeline.
00:09:36.500 Three, talk about some roadblocks.
00:09:38.460 Four, discuss the buyer feedback.
00:09:41.560 Five, review your metrics.
00:09:44.040 Six, announce anything that's going on across the company.
00:09:47.840 Seven, your competitors, so competitive analysis.
00:09:50.740 And eight, train your team.
00:09:54.000 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
00:09:55.560 I wanna share with you my Rocket Demo Builder.
00:09:58.760 You can click the link below to download your copy.
00:10:01.180 It's my nine box framework to allow you
00:10:03.800 to literally cut your sales velocity in half
00:10:07.560 or the amount of time it takes to a closed deal
00:10:09.200 and double the size of your average deal.
00:10:12.240 You can click the link to download that.
00:10:13.660 Rocket Demo Builder, it's helped my clients
00:10:15.560 generate close to a billion dollars in sales.
00:10:18.900 It's yours for free, you can just click the link.
00:10:20.940 If you like this video, be sure to smash that like button,
00:10:23.880 subscribe to my channel and click the notification bell.
00:10:26.260 That is the most important thing
00:10:27.240 so you get notified when new videos are released.
00:10:30.440 And as per usual, I wanna challenge you
00:10:32.400 specifically to live a bigger life and a bigger business
00:10:35.060 and I'll see you next Monday.
00:10:37.560 Dan Martell here, that's a bit much.