Back Together Again with Sean Brennan

Sean Brennan shares how sales leaders and reps can prep for successful sales meetings.

1| At press time, you were gearing up for your organization’s national sales meeting. What have the last few years been like visiting clients and meeting together as a team?

As a privately held, family-run company, the direction our leadership took during the pandemic was that if clinics will see you, then go out and see them. As far as getting the entire group together, we had a national meeting last year with probably about 60% to 70% of our reps. But there were still several people that were either testing positive or a little bit nervous about what was going on because of that second outbreak.

2| As a leader, how do you measure whether you’ve had a successful sales meeting or not?

First and foremost, setting the tone for a positive meeting and for the meeting to be very solution-based. We want to reinvigorate people to finish the year strong. Give them some ideas of what our targets and focuses are going to be in the next year, and keep the meeting as positive as possible.

3| What about for individual reps? What does their mindset need to be for a successful sales meeting?

This past November was my 20th anniversary with the company. In that time, our sales team has gone from being very grassroots, where it was maybe five of us, to now being more than 60. Throughout that time, we’ve always given our reps the autonomy to voice their concerns, what’s happening in the field, and what’s going on in the industry.

This year, we’re going to have a little bit different spin on our meeting. We’re going to break out into roundtables. A lot of times, when you put 60-70 people in a room, there’s going to be some reps that don’t feel comfortable speaking in front of a group that size. The goal for this year is to get it down into breakout groups of maybe eight to 10 people, with some of our sales team leaders spearheading those groups for different focus points – how to work your territory better, how to handle different situations in clinics, etc. We’re going to have them rotate to different stations, so everybody feels like their voice is being heard. If there’s a better solution or idea, other people on the team can share it in a smaller setting versus speaking out in front of 80 people.

I think that’s been one of the strong points of what we do. We try to make it where everybody feels like they can contribute to the greater good.

Meet the leader

Sean Brennan is the East zone sales manager with Nutramax Laboratories Veterinary Sciences, Inc

Photo credit: istockphoto.com/Atelier Mush