How to organize a revenue team meeting (+ sample agendas)

As a content manager, you are responsible for creating content that needs sales. But how do you know what questions to answer in your content? You can figure out for yourself what your customers want to know and do hours of keyword research, but the best input you get is from the people who talk to your customers every day: your sales team.

As head coach at Buzzlytics, I've helped many companies bring sales and marketing together as a revenue team. By brainstorming on content with sales on a weekly basis, you get first-hand insight into the questions your prospects have. This allows you to write content that really contributes to more sales.

In this article, I explain how to set up this collaboration with sales as a content manager. You will learn what a revenue team is, who you need in this team and what topics you discuss during a revenue team meeting. After reading, you will know exactly how to set up a revenue team meeting in which you get direct feedback from sales on your content as well as concrete input for new articles.

A revenue team has one common goal: to increase your company's revenue by creating content that supports the sales process.

A revenue team brings together key players from your sales and marketing departments. The team meets regularly with one common goal: to increase your company's revenue by creating content that supports the sales process.

Research shows that companies that manage to align marketing and sales can increase sales by 67%, revenue by 209% and customer retention by 36%. That sounds great, but in practice it is difficult to get these departments to really work together. A revenue team is the solution to this problem.

But before we get into how to set up a revenue team, I want to save you from one of the biggest mistakes I see many companies make: they use the revenue team meeting as a sales or marketing meeting. But if one person spends most of the time speaking or making presentations, you miss the mark.

So don't use the revenue team meeting for sales forecasts, pipeline discussions or marketing campaigns. It should be a collaboration between marketing and sales where you solve problems together, maximize the impact of content and ultimately generate more sales and revenue.

To build a successful revenue team, go through these 5 steps:

1. Make sure the right people are at the table
2. Determine how often the team meets
3. Designate a facilitator
4. Arrange communication outside of meetings
5. Set the agenda

Let's go through these steps one by one.

A revenue team meeting should be a collaboration between marketing and sales where you end up generating more sales and revenue.

In a revenue team, you need people from different disciplines:

• Sales Manager
• Some sales associates
• Marketing Manager
• Content Manager
• Other marketing staff (such as videographer or designer)
• Senior managers as needed (e.g., VP Sales)

You don't always have to invite the same people to a revenue team meeting. Who you invite depends on the challenges you want to address and what agenda you've chosen for that meeting.

The frequency of revenue team meetings depends on your organization and goals. Small organizations usually meet every other week or monthly. Larger organizations often schedule weekly meetings.

In the start-up phase, it can be valuable to meet more often, say weekly, to build the cooperation between sales and marketing properly. Once the processes are running better, you can reduce the frequency if necessary.

Some companies also take a hybrid approach: for example, they combine monthly in-depth sessions with short weekly stand-ups to discuss key updates and bottlenecks. The important thing is to maintain sufficient momentum and avoid major gaps in communication between departments.

A revenue team brings together people from different departments who are not used to working together. You therefore need a facilitator to manage the meetings. This doesn't have to be the most senior person in the group. Often it is the content manager.

A good facilitator:

• Asks many questions to spark discussion
• Creates an open atmosphere where people dare to brainstorm and disagree with each other
• Keeps the group on task and ensures that the goal of the meeting is achieved

A facilitator is crucial to keeping the revenue team on track and achieving its stated goals. The facilitator ensures that everyone fulfills their responsibilities.

Without a facilitator, the meeting loses focus, you wander off topic and ultimately achieve fewer results.

Collaboration does not stop when the meeting is over. It is important to keep communicating with each other outside of meetings. This keeps everyone informed about what others are working on and what is coming up.

This is extra important when your revenue team only meets once a month. By continuing to communicate, you maintain momentum and the team still feels connected.

Once it is clear what a revenue team meeting entails, who will participate and how often you will meet, you need to set the agenda for the meetings.

An agenda brings structure to the revenue team. It makes clear who is present and what topics are being discussed. This makes for more effective meetings and better team performance.

Below I share some examples of possible agendas for revenue team meetings. But whatever agenda you choose, the goal is always the same: to get sales and marketing working together optimally on content that contributes to sales.

The revenue team usually starts with a content brainstorming session. You use these sessions to solicit ideas from sales for your content. Your sales team shares questions and concerns prospects have, and together you come up with content that answers those questions.

Some examples of questions that may be addressed in these sessions are:

• What common objection have you faced in the past week?
• What deals did we lose? What do you think caused that?
• What questions do you get that directly indicate that a potential customer is not yet ready to make a decision?
• What do our (potential) customers have the most resistance to?
• What are our customers' biggest doubts or concerns (related to the product, process or company)?

Once you have a content plan, there is no need to have the content brainstorm as a regular part of the revenue team agenda. You then only schedule them quarterly, for example, to pick up new topics.

One of the biggest challenges within companies is that marketing is not creating the content that sales needs to close deals. In fact, 23% of sales people say they need better leads from marketing.

This is because marketing does not have daily contact with prospects. They don't know what questions are being asked and where the resistance is. Sales must bridge the gap between marketing and your prospects.

Therefore, it is a good idea to begin this meeting by asking, "What is your biggest challenge in the sales process right now?" This opens up the discussion and allows you to create a focused content plan.

To make sure the content ideas you come up with are useful, you can ask sales additional questions:

• If the marketing team creates this content, how does this solve your problem?
• Is it clear in which part of the sales process this content can be used?
• Is it clear for whom the content is intended and how to use it?

This collaborative approach ensures that marketing and sales are on the same page, ultimately leading to more sales and a more successful revenue team.

23% of salespeople say they need better leads from marketing.

Assignment selling is the process of sending prospects content that answers their questions prior to a sales call. This way, you use the time in the conversation to address their specific situation. This can increase your closing rate from 20% to 80%.

Without revenue team meetings, it's hard to keep sales informed about new content.

During these meetings:

• Sales shows how they deployed content and what it achieved
• Marketing presents new content and you discuss where in the sales process you can deploy it
• Sales gets concrete tasks to start using content
• Sales shares what works and what doesn't

There are several ways to facilitate this agenda in a revenue team meeting, but make sure the atmosphere is open and stimulating.

This agenda is very similar to the one above. The difference is that in this case the time in the revenue team meeting is used to look at the videos created together, with the central question: how do you maximize the impact of these videos?

The goal of this meeting is that sales has seen the latest videos and knows exactly which prospects these videos can accelerate the sales process.

Questions to ask during this meeeting:

• What prospects are you currently working with who you think should see this video?
• How would you recommend this video to your prospects? Why should they watch it?
• What is a logical time in the sales process to deploy this video?

In this general meeting, everyone shares what they are working on, where they are stuck and what they are concerned about. For example, this prevents sales from not hearing about a new marketing campaign until prospects ask about it.

Marketing presents new campaigns and sales gives input based on conversations with prospects. This prevents sending the wrong offers to prospects or confusing prospects.

The sales team can also help the marketing team develop new offerings by identifying opportunities they notice directly with customers.

At Buzzlytics, we start each day with a collaborative Daily Huddle where everyone shares what they are working on and what they need help with.

A well-run revenue team is the way to go as a content manager to create content that really contributes to more sales. By meeting regularly with sales, you know exactly what questions your prospects have and how your content can support the sales process.

This structural collaboration between marketing and sales ensures that you no longer waste time on content that won't be used anyway. Instead, you write articles that allow sales to "close" leads faster and make sure your content is used directly in the sales process.

At Buzzlytics, we help content managers structure collaboration with sales. We see time and again that companies working with a revenue team get more results from their content marketing.

Want to learn more about how to create content that contributes to sales?

Then also read these articles:

• How do you write a blog that generates traffic, leads and sales? [proven method]
• Business blogging: 5 blog topics that drive traffic and sales (+ examples)
• Here's how to get sales excited about contributing to content

See all our articles for content managers here.