How to Run a Successful Sales Meeting: Agenda Topics and Tips

Your team is probably already busy updating Salesforce, reaching out to leads, running product demos, and getting trained. It’s only natural that they see an internal sales meeting as a waste of time.

So, how do you show them the value behind sharing best practices, connecting with each other, and minimizing siloes? The key is making your meetings more interactive and making the team feel heard.

In this article, we’ve come up with a list of tips, potential agenda topics, and steps to follow before, during, and after the call to boost engagement.

What is a sales meeting?

A sales meeting is a weekly or monthly catch-up between sales leaders and representatives. During the meeting, the team will follow a structured agenda to:

• Improve morale
• Share best practices
• Give updates on projects, policy changes, prices, or products
• Review metrics
• Collaborate with each other
• Get to know new team members

Note: Sales meetings are typically internal and shouldn’t be confused with demos, deminars, client meetings, or virtual sales calls.

What to include in your sales meeting agenda

Sales teams already spend too much time in meetings. If you want them to see the value behind your team meeting, include them in the ideation process before you set the agenda. As a starting point, use this list to spark ideas for sales meeting topics like:

• Ice breakers
• Meeting objectives
• KPIs
• Wins
• Updates
• Blockers
• Next steps

Ice breakers

Come up with multiple ice breaker ideas that get people to chat, laugh, or vote on a poll. This is a simple way to check in with your people and shouldn’t take longer than five to ten minutes to avoid taking most of the meeting time. Remember that these are voluntary and you should avoid putting anyone on the spot.

Pro tip: If you’re hosting these sessions online, use a virtual meeting platform like Livestorm that lets you break the ice with polls, emoji reactions, or Miro or Mural virtual whiteboards.

Meeting objectives

Conversations can often get derailed from the initial meeting intention. Take a minute at the beginning of every session to remember the goal of the meeting and keep it in mind throughout. That way, you’ll have a more focused session where people only bring topics up for discussion if it aligns with your meeting goal.

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Use this space to talk about sales goals. Review the numbers and ask if anyone needs help reaching a particular KPI. If your reps are already reviewing the sales strategy with their managers and are on top of their KPIs, this should just be a short reminder. However, if this is the only place where your sales reps get to review metrics, take a bit more time to explain expected milestones and objectives.

Wins

Especially on remote teams, people’s work can go unnoticed. You can solve that problem by inviting everyone to share their peers' or direct reports' wins. This space isn’t only for top performers, you can also celebrate specific behaviors to promote company values that you want to reinforce. This is a simple way to make your team feel valued and get them looking forward to the meeting.

Pro tip: Some teams are oriented towards team building and would love to get to know their teammates and celebrate wins. However, that’s not always the case. Avoid pushing an agenda that works for you but will cause sales team members to disengage. In Livestorm, you can use virtual polls to gauge your team's feelings towards this segment during the meeting.

Updates

You want people to see value in this meeting, so use it to share relevant, team-wide information. Allow them to add updates to this list and skip it if there’s nothing to discuss.

Here’s an example of a relevant update. Let’s say one of the team KPIs is to reach one million in sales by the end of the quarter. But, one of the biggest clients was acquired by another company and there’s a possibility that they’d end the contract with you. A weekly sales meeting is the place to share this so others can find ways to

• Shorten the sales cycle on their open conversations
• Upsell to current clients
• Help build an action plan
• Revisit their pipeline
• Work together on a sales pitch for the new owners

Blockers

Being in sales can often cause teams to work in silos and forget that they have peers that are probably facing similar challenges. That’s why you should encourage people to ask for help to solve roadblocks during team meetings. This can lead to a brainstorming or knowledge-sharing session in the future.

Next steps

Meetings should always facilitate other things to happen, so make sure you assign actions rather than letting them slide into next week. As part of your meeting management tech stack, you need project management software that lets you keep your action items on track. Remember to review the progress of open tasks in the next sales meeting.

How to run an effective sales meeting

To run an effective sales meeting, divide your efforts into three buckets to know what to do before, during, and after the session. Most of the advice is applicable to all session formats, but we've also added useful tips and tricks for amazing virtual sales meetings.

How to prepare for a sales meeting

First, you'll need to figure out what day, time, and agenda will work best. After that, it shouldn’t take you longer than 20 minutes to fill up your meeting agenda template or adjust your presentation.

Here’s how to prepare for your sales meeting:

1- Find a time
2- Come up with a meeting agenda template
3- Craft a presentation (optional)
4- Host virtual sales meetings
5- Assign a note-taker (optional)

1. Find a time

It may be difficult to find a time that works for everyone, especially if your team is remote and working from different time zones. However, once you set up a weekly or monthly date and time, people should be able to build their schedules around it.

To identify when to host the sales meeting, run a poll with your team and pick the day and time that suits them best. Then, set up a recurring event in your company’s calendar or directly on your online meeting software if you’re using Livestorm. That way you won’t have to schedule a call every week or month.

2. Come up with a meeting agenda template

Once you’ve hit on the right format for your meeting, turn it into a template agenda to simplify the weekly or monthly prep. In the lead up to each meeting, invite attendees to collaborate on the agenda using a collaborative app like ClickUp or Notion. You can also let others present the topics they’ve suggested to avoid monologuing throughout.

For instance, if someone wants to share their learnings on closing a large deal, allow them to do so during the meeting. Then, keep the other items short or solve them asynchronously to avoid running out of time.

Pro tip: It’s important that you’re mindful of the meeting length when you’re setting an agenda. If you’re booking it for 30 minutes, then your agenda should be short and concise so you can keep the meeting on track.

3. Craft a presentation

Not all team meetings require a presentation. You can simply share your agenda on whichever platform you use and talk through it. But, if you’d rather use a presentation, make a simple, visually engaging template that you can repurpose for each meeting.

If you’re hosting this meeting online, use Visme or PowerPoint and embed the presentation into Livestorm. That way you’ll be able to go through it without having to switch tabs to pass slides.

4. Host sales meetings virtually

Making it easy for everyone to join helps reduce meeting dread. That’s why virtual meeting platforms like Livestorm are so useful - they make meetings more flexible and accessible no matter where you are. Even if you’re not a remote team, you can host hybrid meetings to support colleagues who might not be able to access the office that day. Plus, you get access to automatic recordings, engagement analytics, and in-app features like a Q&A tab.

For example, if a team member is on their way to a client meeting or working from home due to unexpected childcare issues, they can join your meeting remotely while everyone else attends in person. Or, if you record the session, they can simply watch the replay from their desk at a more convenient time.

5. Assign a note-taker

Sometimes people come to meetings expecting them to be boring and unproductive. So, they work on other things while they’re at it or simply stop paying attention. But if they’re not listening, you have no room to potentially change their minds.

To encourage focus, you can assign a different note-taker each week. Since this person is responsible for writing meeting minutes, they’ll need to pay attention. Changing the role every week gives everyone the opportunity to focus and possibly be more attentive at your next sales meeting.

How to act as the sales meeting host

You want these sessions to be the best use of your people’s time, so the first thing you need to do is to start on time. Then, you should:

6- Avoid tired ice breaker questions
7- Kick it off right away
8- Encourage interaction

6. Avoid tired ice breaker questions

Ice breakers don’t have to be awkward. You can get creative and think of something new every week or simply rotate ideas. Don’t forget to let your team make suggestions too! One of our favorite ideas is sharing “culture recommendations”, where each team member shares a TV show, book, or podcast they’ve enjoyed in the last week.

If you’re using a platform like Livestorm to host sales meetings online, invite people to unmute themselves or share their answers through the chat. You can also ask them to use emoji reactions to share how they feel about what people are sharing, or even vote for the best recommendation on a poll by the end of the ice breaker round.

7. Kick it off right away

As soon as you finish the ice breaker, share the agenda and start going through each point. If this is the first time you’re hosting the session, you might want to take time to share the rules of the call. For example, if this is an online session, you might want to explain if it’s a camera on or off call and how you want people to interact.

8. Encourage interaction

If when you review the agenda prior to the meeting, it looks like you’ll be the only one talking, ask other employees to present one of the items. For example, if you want to talk about specific sales skills and you know that someone recently took a class on it, ask them if they’re willing to present the topic.

Pro tip: If you’re hosting a live meeting, ask people to share their ideas through your team chat before the event and compile insights. If you’re hosting it virtually on a platform like Livestorm, open a digital whiteboard or send people to breakout rooms to get them to interact in a more focused environment.

How to close a sales meeting

Wrap up your team meetings on time and make sure you:

9- Set action items
10- Follow up by sending the recording and meeting notes

9. Set action items

Recap everything you talked about during the session and revisit the next steps. Get the note-taker to use Asana or Notion to compile notes and assign tasks. If you run out of time, move pending agenda items to the next sales meeting agenda.

10. Follow up by sending the recording and meeting notes

If you’re having the sales meeting in-person, get the note-taker to share a summary with everyone on the team as soon as the meeting ends. If you’re having a virtual meeting, notes are also useful, but you can simplify work by sharing the recording. You can use Livestorm to automatically record the meeting as soon as it starts and send the video through email. That way, everyone can rewatch the call or catch up in case they couldn’t attend.

Tips to host killer sales meetings and get your team engaged

Getting your team to be present and engaged during internal sales meetings can be challenging. However, it can get a lot easier if you follow these best practices for virtual meetings or live ones.

• Keep it short: you don’t need one and a half hours for team meetings. If possible, keep this session to 30 minutes. If you’re having a virtual call on Livestorm, you can use the on-screen timer to keep track of the time during each agenda point.
• Train your team on using the internal analytics dashboards: explain how to read and update the sales dashboard. That way, you can talk about it during the meeting knowing that everyone understands their KPIs.
• Be on top of the latest updates: use these meetings to talk about industry trends or best practices. Assign monthly tasks for sales reps to take an hour a month to research what competitors are doing.
• Shadow each other: working in sales doesn’t need to be a lonely job, encourage them to shadow and learn from each other.
• Become feedback fanatics: build a culture that’s feedback-driven. Create peer review programs or encourage people to seek and take mentors who can give them pointers about their work.
• Get creative: avoid letting meetings become repetitive. You can bring consumers or clients to meetings, ask them questions, and get deeper insights about who you’re selling to.
• Make full use of the meeting platform: if you’re hosting the sessions online, ensure everyone knows how to use the platform. It helps if you use user-friendly, browser-based, and easy to join software like Livestorm.

Are sales meetings worth your team’s time?

Sales meetings are one of the only chances your sales representatives have to connect with their peers. You can’t skip them. But, you also don’t want your team meeting to be a useless monologue.

For sales meetings your team won’t hate, set a clear meeting agenda and learn how to prep, host, and end them efficiently. Encourage as much collaboration from your team as possible, including encouraging them to add agenda points and take turns presenting and note-taking.

If you’re hosting sales meetings online, you need a video conferencing tool like Livestorm that’s easy to use, promotes engagement, and gives you access to analytics. With Livestorm, you can boost interaction during meetings using features like polls, breakout rooms, and digital whiteboards.

Frequently asked questions about sales meetings

What should be discussed in a sales meeting?

During sales meetings, you should discuss topics that are relevant to all or most of the sales team. That includes:

• Company updates
• Knowledge sharing
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Price or product changes

Client-specific topics should be discussed in smaller, segmented meetings.

What are the types of sales meetings?

There are different types of departmental sales meetings:

• Virtual or live team meetings
• Team training sessions
• New product introductions
• Celebratory sessions

What is the objective of sales meetings?

The objective of sales meetings is to align team members toward common goals and:

• Motivate sales reps
• Foster collaboration
• Share knowledge between team members
• Update the team on new products or changes
• Develop new skills
• Recognize team members