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Read MoreLast quarter, a sales head I’d been working with sent me a one-line WhatsApp at 11 PM on a Sunday: “First Sunday in five years I haven’t taken a sales call.” We hadn’t changed his team. We hadn’t changed his product. We hadn’t changed his price. We had installed five meetings.
The problem you probably recognise
Most Indian SMEs don’t have a sales process. They have a sales calendar. A Monday morning meeting where the sales head talks for thirty minutes about the previous week. The occasional ad-hoc review when a big deal is wobbling. A quarterly business review that is mostly slides nobody reads beyond page four. In between, sales runs on heroics. The founder makes the difficult call. The sales head closes the big account. The brilliant ASM in Bengaluru carries his region single-handed. It works — until one of them is on leave. Or, worse, leaves.
Meeting 1 — the Monday forecast
Every Monday at 9:30 AM. 45 minutes. The sales head and the team walk the pipeline against the quarter. Every deal in the top 15 has a clean status, a forecast confidence, a next step and an owner. Nothing else. Not strategy, not training, not motivational talks. The single question: what is going to land this quarter, and what are the deals that are slipping? When this meeting becomes ritual, the rest of the system has somewhere to live.
Meeting 2 — the Wednesday deal clinic
Mid-week, 45 minutes, top 3 deals only. The sales head, the rep, one senior leader. Hard questions on each deal. What is the buyer actually waiting for? What objection is the rep avoiding? What escalation is needed? Most sales teams in Indian SMEs have never had a meeting where someone senior asked them the hard question about the specific deal that has been stuck for six weeks. After this meeting, they have one every Wednesday. The change in close rates within 60 days is the kind that founders notice.
Meeting 3 — the monthly pipeline build
First Friday of every month, 90 minutes, the whole commercial leadership. New pipeline added vs target. Where are the leaks? What channels are working? What needs to happen in the next 30 days to keep the funnel honest? This meeting is the one that separates the businesses that grow predictably from the ones that grow in lurches.
Meeting 4 — the monthly customer review
Mid-month, 60 minutes. Top 20 customers by revenue, colour-coded green / amber / red. Each red customer has an owner and a 30-day action. This meeting is the one that catches a customer relationship before it walks. We have lost count of how many times this single meeting has saved a top-20 account that nobody at the head office knew was wobbling.
Meeting 5 — the QBR
Last week of every quarter, three hours, only one this is for: the CEO. Deep-dive on segments, channels, products, geographies. Calibration against full-year plan. Pricing review. Team performance calibration. By the end of three hours, the leadership team has the same view of what the next quarter looks like and what needs to change in it. The QBR is the meeting that lets the CEO stop being the only person who can answer ‘how are we doing?’
"You don’t need a CRM to install a sales system. You need five meetings."
Flip Slide Consultancy
The takeaway
Pick one of the five meetings to install in the next 14 days. The Monday forecast is the easiest place to start. Run it for 60 days without missing once. By the end of 60 days, you will not be able to imagine running sales without it.
If this resonated with you, book a 30-minute discovery call — we’ll tell you, honestly, whether this is the right conversation for your business right now.
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