A sales standup meeting is just like a regular meeting only where everyone is standing, right?
Wrong! A standup is a nuanced tool. Most often seen in project management, these crucial daily 15 minutes encourages the team to align to the team goals, build trust and accountability, and promote transparency.
The way managerial psychologists explain the effectiveness of a standup meeting is usually something on the lines of “salience determines attentional orientation.” In plain English, people pay attention to what is immediately relevant to them. In a standup meeting, the meeting leader determines when to sit and when to stand up.
Standup meetings have long been popular in companies that develop agile software. They are often the first marketing meeting of the day. They aren’t intended to be creative marketing meetings. But because they are so effective for focusing attention and encouraging teamwork, they are growing in popularity across different departments in different industries.
Huddle up!
The prelude to every sales standup meeting agenda is to rally the troops. Some companies signal that a standup meeting is about to commence with music. One uses the overture from Mony Python and the Holy Grail to signal a standup meeting is about to begin.
Tip: Maybe your team will respond better to the theme from Jaws! A song, a video, or just an audible tone, captures attention for the standup.
Gathering time is also an excellent opportunity to instill intrigue.
Tip: Sales data, company news, or even a cartoon displayed on a video screen can get your team to start thinking about the information you want to hear from the meeting. This should be light-hearted, if possible, but never a stimulus to irrelevant conversation.
Tip: An essential element of a standup meeting is actually, literally, standing up.
Schedule the meeting for a room without chairs or even a busy hallway. It is important to keep your meeting short and to keep the size of the meeting small. Another way to ensure brevity is to book a room for your meeting scheduled to start just 15 minutes after your own.
When you are just starting this daily practice, it can be helpful to use a sales standup meeting template and take time to evaluate how they went. Perhaps you want to ask more task-oriented questions. Maybe you’re not including every participant in the discussion. Every member of your team has something to contribute and something for which they need help.
What do you say in a sales standup meeting?
Every participant in every sales standup meeting should be accountable for answering three questions in front of everyone present:
- Who did you talk to yesterday?
- Who are you talking with today?
- Where do you need help today?
One of the reasons for asking these questions is to ensure that every member of your staff is staying on task and achieving sales goals. Another reason for asking these questions in a group is to ensure that your sales force is accomplishing goals as a team. When you consider the question, “What should be discussed in our next smarketing team meeting?” you need to look to help your team achieve their goals as individuals and as a team.
Tip: It’s important to keep the span of discretion short. A standup meeting isn’t about what you did last year or what you plan to do six months from now. It’s about what everyone is accomplishing, and everyone needs help to achieve today.
Why every day?
Once you start having standups every day, be consistent.
Tip: Have your standup meeting every day at the same time.
Tip: Don’t wait for stragglers.
Holding a sales standup meeting every day leaves your team members more alert and motivated to make sales. Some of the benefits of a daily stand up meeting include:
- Regular alignment to help to maintain sales coaching techniques and standards
- Identify potential overlap in outreach between reps
- Foster higher levels of collaboration among team members to share best practices and customer resources
- Build confidence among team members and excitement in reaching big goals
The sales standup meeting agenda at the beginning of every day gives your team renewed motivation for greater productivity. And software tools give you a metric for measuring accountability.
