I have been reading sales books as long as I can remember. I have noticed something over the years – many of the accepted principles don’t hold up well in the real world. Holding long meetings and having very detailed conversations with clients was one of the biggest mistakes I saw salespeople make.

Many salespeople seem to believe that their sales conversion rates will be higher if they spend a lot of time with their clients. Lisa Gschwandtner, Editorial Director for Selling Power Magazine shares my view and states that this misconception needs to be put to rest.

“Time spent in meetings could be time spent making sales. So don't waste it. If your meetings aren't productive, your salespeople won't be either. Use these time-honored time-management tricks to keep your meetings focused, succinct and on track,” Gschwandtner states.

Here are some reasons this thinking is flawed:

• If you spend a lot of time in sales meetings or prospecting calls, you will have less time to spend reaching new leads.
• Lead conversion rates aren’t always linked to the amount of time you spend in meetings. Many customers have already made up their minds, so it is important to know when to throw in the towel.
• When you block out a large chunk of time for a prospecting call or sales meeting, it may not be used effectively. You and your client may spend a lot of time on small talk instead of getting to the point.

Your time is valuable, so it is important to use it wisely. Here are some tips to make sure your sales meetings are concise and productive, so you can spend more time generating sales.

Have a Clear Goal and Focusing Agenda

Your time is valuable. Your client’s time is valuable. You don’t want to waste it.

You need to have a clear goal for every meeting or call. The goal may be to close a sale during the meeting itself. It could also be to make the customer aware that your brand is an option or to inform them about several key benefits of several of your products. It could be to touch base with your sales team to see how close they are to meeting their quotas.

It is also a good idea to have a focusing agenda. Come up with a list of three to five questions to bring up by the end. If you are meeting with your sales team, important questions may include:

• When will you meet with your most promising prospect?
• How close are you to closing a sale?
• Do you need any assistance?

Keep the discussion brief and limit it to getting the information you need.

Get Important Information from Existing Data Instead of Your Meetings

Inc. contributor Ian Altman states that many salespeople he speaks with have wasted a lot of time getting information that could be obtained from their CRM data.

“The problem with these questions is that Sue (and you) could answer most of them just from reviewing the CRM and doing a little preparation in advance. You've been taught that people do what gets measured or monitored. But, why does everyone have to be there to know that Tim met with the client last week and that the client will likely push off their decision to the following month?”

You can also use sales data from your outsourced accounting to spot trends. Rather than asking your sales staff to discuss their sales trends over the past year, you can easily find the data yourself. Your accountant should have a special software that can break sales down by region, salesperson and other important factors.

Break Information into Manageable Chunks

People can be overloaded with too much information. It is better to break it down into smaller pieces of information that can be easier to digest.

Short Sales Meetings are the Key to More Sales

People in the sales profession tend to enjoy talking. Unfortunately, that can be their kryptonite, because they often waste time on long meetings that could be better spent finding and reaching out to new leads.

As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to believe that you have to completely reinvent the wheel to make millions. No, sometimes you can reach your goals by simply improving the industry you’re already in through bettering the customer experience. Here are some great tips for how entrepreneurs can be innovative without breaking their fields.

1. Focus on Making Things Easier

Sometimes all you have to do is make the existing way of doing things easier. TheZebra.com did this through making it easy for customers to compare auto insurance policies across multiple companies. This meant customers could spend mere minutes investigating multiple companies.

Kayak did exactly the same thing with travel. They made it easy to find the best price for things like hotels, airline tickets, and rental cars. We can see the same with different types of accommodation, pioneered by Booking. They have swallowed up the hostel, hotel, and rental apartment industry in one, and it’s all because they made a basic function easier for customers.

1. Improve on What’s Already on the Market

Some would say companies like Uber and Lyft revolutionized the personal transport industry. But what they actually did was improve on something that already existed. They took the flaws inherent in public cabs and provided a better solution for customers, including:

• Making them cheaper.
• Presenting a more user-friendly option.
• Taking advantage of the mobile revolution.

The final product is exactly the same, but the way users book and the way users pay have changed. They succeeded through replacing an archaic system.

1. Do Things Better

If you have the stomach for direct competition you can simply provide the same solution with some minor changes. This is what Jeff Bezos of Amazon did when he initially came up with Amazon Auctions. His attempt at beating out eBay didn’t work the first time, but over time he found a solution that worked for him.

That’s where the Amazon Marketplace comes in. It was a combination of a basic online store and the online marketplace that was eBay. It worked and Amazon became a household name.

Bezos always welcomed failure, though, and he didn’t shrug it off, as he says, “Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time.”

So How Should Entrepreneurs Get Started?

Know Your Industry – Don’t just go where the money is. You need passion and you need a strong knowledge of the business you’re going into.

A Need – You need to find that need. Look at the big names in your chosen field and investigate their negative reviews. If the same complaint appears time and time again that’s a strong sign the industry is crying out for a new solution.

Viability – Even if you find a need it’s often not viable to implement. That could be due to technology not keeping up with customer needs or the solution being too expensive for small-time entrepreneurs.

Last Word – Look for the Small Changes

Not every award-winning idea has to be big or grand. A small alteration to how people do things can be all you need to really hit it big.

How will you start your small business today?