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Supercharge your monthly car sales meeting topics with team brainstorming and open forum communication
Do you ever get the feeling that your monthly sales meetings are going nowhere? Everyone piles into the conference room five minutes late, still chewing on the last of their lunches, expecting to go over the same, run-of-the-mill topics yet again.
As the sales manager, you’re poised and ready to go over sales reports, projections, new inventory, and open discussion (which usually leads off topic). The car sales meeting topics you cover are important, but they don’t seem to get your team motivated or pro-active.
You’ve lost your way—or maybe you just never learned how to run a productive sales meeting —but don’t worry. Start at the beginning, build a new foundation, and develop a strategy with car sales meeting topics that are going to create a positive selling environment for everyone.
What is the purpose of a sales meeting?
You host regular sales meetings, but do you know why you’re doing it? Sales meetings are held to increase revenue. They aren’t your time to scold your team because they aren’t hitting their numbers or to bore them with statistics and data. In an auto dealership sales meeting, you are the coach trying to motivate your team to do the best they can every day and make money.
Sales meetings provide an opportunity for your salespeople to break free of the daily grind, get together, and brainstorm creative ideas and solutions for selling more cars.
The do’s and don’ts of developing car sales meeting topics
The specific car sales meeting topics you ultimately choose to discuss are going to be up to you, as only you know the unique dynamics of your team and dealership. However, there are certain things you should keep in mind as you establish an agenda.
Car sales meeting topics: Don’t
- Stand at the head of the conference table and lecture your team for an hour. If the only voice you hear for the majority of a sales meeting is your own, you’ve probably lost the interest and attention of your salespeople.
- Take a deep dive into the world of numbers. It can be tempting to print off a couple dozen copies of the monthly sales numbers and slowly analyze them bit by bit. After all, those numbers are what your team is looking to increase, right? Yes, your salespeople should always be aware of the figures, but send them in an email with a couple bullet points you want to call attention to. They can read, and they don’t need to sit with you in a conference room like children while you tell them what everything means.
- Talk about anything that can be easily shared via email. There will be times when you may want to call particular attention to a model in your inventory or reinforce the importance of a specific HR policy, but in general, the majority of those things can be communicated through email.
Car sales meeting topics: Do
- Focus on the positive. When you harp on a bad sales week or call people out in sales meetings for making mistakes, you’re creating a negative work environment. Positive reinforcement in the workplace goes a lot further than punishment; when you congratulate your salespeople for jobs well done, they are more inclined to keep up the good work.
- Find ways to make your meeting more interactive. If PowerPoint presentations are your best friends, try to think outside the box a bit. For example, start or end your meetings with a motivational video or conduct role-playing games. Encourage open forum communication and push your employees to participate—not just sit, “listen,” and let their eyes glaze over.
- Become solution-oriented. Productive car sales meeting topics stem from asking employees to come with issues they had recently, and encouraging a team brainstorm to help solve the problems. Talk about how to handle common customer objections or shortcuts in the office that can save time. Instead of creating a sales meeting environment in which employees come to complain, you are reframing everything to be solution-oriented.
Regardless of the car sales meeting topics you choose to focus on, your salespeople should always leave the meetings feeling uplifted, motivated, and positive. If you take the time to show your team you care and coach them toward achieving their full potential, you won’t just see your sales numbers increase—your dealership will be a better place to work.