If you’re a sports fan, or an athlete, as I am, you know when you or your team are “flat” and are just phoning-in their performances, and when they’re juiced, and ready to go.

It makes a crucial difference in sports, as well as in selling.

In both situations, we have to get up for the game, and if you’re a sales manager, it’s your duty to psych up your players before every engagement, whenever possible.

As a former sales manager, and as a sales coach and consultant, I advocate having frequent sales meetings for this purpose. Meet, greet, and motivate your people before every shift, if they sell from inside.

If they’re outside sellers, try to arrange frequent telephone conferences to achieve the same thing,

Remind them of their sales targets, and try to tell inspiring stories, or share recent customer testimonials with them.

Every meeting should give them another reason to feel proud of themselves and what they’re selling.

You can use these get-togethers to review closing techniques, or to introduce better techniques of any kind. And most important, team members can discuss what’s working for them, which their peers don’t get a chance to see and to hear for themselves.

But the key deliverable from a successful meeting is emotion. They should get a boost, feeling higher and more energized than before.

One of my salesmen said to me, after our umpteenth meeting, “Gary, I might be able to make more money somewhere else, but nothing is going to be this much fun!”

Mission accomplished!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.