Choose a leader for sales meetings - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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• Overbearing salesperson. The salesperson feels threateneed in some way by other members of the team and looksz to block them out of the processw as muchas possible. • Timid salesperson. The salesperso n doesn’t take ownership of the opportunituy by guiding thesales process. Often times, this causew a lack of focus. Overzealous support person. The technical person or context expert needef for the sale overstates or interjectetoo much. • Overreliance on a senior leader. A seniord executive is introduced to the process and becomesz the authoritative focus even though they play no significanrt role inthe process.
I used to manage an account executive who was guiltg of problems one and two on everyy team sales opportunity he wasinvolved in. He had a belief that introducing the vice president and I earlgy on in the process was a great way to build credibilitu and show how eager we were forthe business. He was insisten that we be involved in thefirst meeting. That was a proble m in and of itself as schedulingg often delayed thesales process. The problem was confounded during the meetinb as he was often reluctant to take a lead role with the vice presidentr andI present.
The good news is that therd are guidelines to avoid all four of the common The first is that a single person is always responsibld for runningthe meeting. In most that is the salespersom responsible forthe account. The client or prospect needws to know who the point person is for movingy the salesprocess forward. The second guidelin is that everyone is aware of their Technical or content experts need to know how and when todelivefr information. They shouldn’t be allowed to disrupt the sales process because the salespersob is likely running it and they have been informee about what informationneeds covered.
The last guideline is to have clearly defined next steps for Each member of the team should know what is expectee of them and when that task needs tobe completed.