Ideas To Energize Virtual Sales and Marketing Meetings

In today’s current digital-first workplace, you’re likely to work with someone who isn’t always in the office. Especially now as companies work to ensure the safety of the employees due to uncertain times through work from home policies. As a result, in-person meetings with fellow sales and marketing team members are now shifted online. For some, virtual meetings may just be a normal part of their profession. And for others, business isn’t as usual. This is a new head-scratching moment to figure out how they can engage their team members without face-to-face meetings.

As the saying goes, the show must go on. Virtual meetings can be an effective way to interact and communicate with team members and customers. A Gigaom Research report stated that 87% of remote users see video conferencing as a benefit that helps them feel more connected to the meeting process and their team. Here are a few ideas on how to keep up the energy during your sales and marketing meeting to get your teams – even if it’s online.

Consistent Communication

Having more frequent check-ins or stand-ups can be one way to make your meetings more effective. Instead of long unwieldy meetings, consider brief, regular and frequent meetings to keep teams communicating consistently. If you touch base with your team members or other department leads for a shorter amount of time, but more frequently, you are more likely to stay on topic when you do chat. Ensure every team member has an opportunity to speak and that they are heard. One way to make frequent meetings a habit is to end each of your meetings by setting the following meeting date or making sure you have a consistently recurring meeting date.

Prepare (and Distribute) Your Agenda

Creating an agenda should be the bare minimum of your meeting preparations. Ensure that you’re allowing enough time for effective discussion, reviewing or answering questions and that you’re not going too long or too far off-topic with the agenda. If you want to go above and beyond with your organization skills, you can include extra agenda notes to the calendar invitation, such as who is covering each topic and approximately how long each discussion will take. This can help you stay on schedule and keep everyone accountable.

Another step to consider is the timing and distribution of your agenda. Do you finalize the agenda right before the meeting is about to start or do you send it to your employees ahead of time? When employees have the chance to scan talking points before the meeting begins, they have time to think of any relevant questions, to explore relevant resources and the space to brainstorm ideas individually before coming into a group setting.

Start By Celebrating Successes

When you’re working in-person, there are a number of opportunities to engage team members and celebrate successes in the office. From ringing the sales gong to booking meetings – there’s a certain energy that an office provides. Working remoting doesn’t necessarily present the same opportunities, that’s why it is even more important to celebrate successes during virtual meetings as part of the agenda. Spend the first few minutes of the meeting celebrating your team:

• What was accomplished since the last meeting?
• Who was overperforming with their goals this week?
• What marketing endeavors yielded an uptick in leads generated or other KPIs?

Letting your team brag about their wins raises the spirits of everyone in a virtual before you get started. When employees are recognized for their creativity, sales accomplishments or new discoveries, they will feel motivated to keep up the momentum.

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