The One-on-One Meeting: The Sales Manager’s Primary Tool for Accelerating Sales Performance

The One-on-One Meeting: The Sales Manager’s Primary Tool for Accelerating Sales Performance

In the effective sales manager’s toolbox, you will always find the one-one meeting. The one-one meeting is one of the most important tools that the sales manager can employ. It is no wonder that most high-performance sales managers perform this ritual religiously, whereas managers of low-performance sales teams do not.

If you want to accelerate your sales-team’s performance, one sure-fire way is to begin to schedule regular one-one meetings that focus on measured results. These one-one meetings, when done right, communicate to your team that results matter. It provides a venue where reviewing results is expected. These regular meetings allow you to look at the key KPI’s for each member of your team, review how they performed relative to their goals in each key area where you measure performance and identify gaps. It allows you to recognize and congratulate good performance, while providing a venue to coach your sales reps where performance falls short.

What are the key elements of every one-one meeting?

First, the one-one meetings need to be regular. Your sales reps must expect the one-one meeting every month or week. I recommend at least monthly one-one’s. If you haven’t performed one-one’s with your team in the past, initially you will need to explain their importance. I would say something like this: “Team, I will begin to meet with each of you monthly to review prior month’s performance. It will first give me a chance to congratulate you for those goals you exceeded. It also allows us to look at any areas where you may have fallen short of attaining goals. We can look at any contributing factors to missing goals and discuss adjustments that you can make to get back on track to hitting your goals in the current month.” You may get some objections, but you can just say “we are a professional sales organization, and in a professional sales organization, you should expect regular one-one meetings with your sales manager (me) to review results.” Once you get a few months of one-one meetings under your belt, your team will expect these meetings. Your top performers will even look forward to them.

Second, one-one meetings must focus on key KPI’s and compare results to goals. If you don’t have goals that you set annually with your sales reps for each month, you will need to first set goals. Identifying which Key Performance Indicators is also very important. I recommend measuring both “output” KPI’s and “Input” KPI’s, with the highest degree of importance being put on “output” KPI’s. Some example of output KPI’s would be revenue, revenue growth, number of new accounts, new account revenue, gross profit, gross profit percentage. Input KPI’s ultimately show you that your team members have healthy funnels. Examples of input KPI’s would be: Number of new opportunities added to the funnel, number of opportunities where the opportunity-stage has advanced, number of sales calls, etc.

Another way to look at this is that “output KPI’s” are results whereas “input KPI’s” are activities. If the sales professional you are meeting with is meeting their output goals, you don’t have to examine input KPI’s as thoroughly. When a salesperson isn’t hitting their output goals, though, you will have to take a much closer look at their inputs. Furthermore, if a salesperson isn’t hitting their output goals consistently, you may need to take a deeper dive into the inputs by examining their funnel in detail and even examining their calendar. I know that seems like micromanagement, but you only need to get “micro” when a salesperson is consistently underperforming from an output/results standpoint. Ultimately, in sales, it is results that matter. The goal of this closer examination of inputs is to help your underperforming salesperson understand why they are falling short of results, and then help them take appropriate action. Once that sales professional returns to more consistent goal-attainment, you won't need analyze their inputs quite as closely.

Third, one-one meetings must involve effective coaching. When you identify performance gaps, you have an opportunity to coach. If you find that the sales professional is having difficulty getting to the decision maker, you can “role-play” that call with the salesperson and then coach on how to improve. Make role-playing as real as possible. Coaching involves asking excellent, open-ended questions and then engaging in active listening. Once you have understood and diagnosed a performance challenge, you can effectively give advice, assist with skill development, or develop an action plan for achieving the desired results.

Finally, in you one-one, you need to gain commitment from your reps to take needed action to perform well in the current month. Many times, when identifying performance gaps, your salespeople will give you a litany of excuses. If, for example, the salesperson performed poorly because they simply didn’t make enough sales calls, your salesperson is likely to give excuses like “I just don’t have enough time” or something to that effect. You will need to troubleshoot the excuses, and coach in how to overcome the perceived obstacle. Once you’ve done the coaching, hold your rep accountable: “Based on your growth goals and new account goals for this month, you need to make those ten sales calls each week. Can you give me your commitment that you will accomplish these ten weekly calls this month?”. Gaining commitment is vital.

You will be amazed at how performing consistent, effective one-one meetings will positively impact sales performance.

Good Selling!