Looking to have a quick boost of productivity in your sales team?

Many sales managers will have their team jump on a call blitz when they want them to get a good cold-calling session done. 

These cold-calling power hours are a great tool to get your team’s productivity to go up in a short period of time. 

Just have your reps gather together and only focus on calling prospects for a specific time period. Not only is this good to boost your team’s activity metrics, but it’s also an excellent way to have your reps target a certain prospect group, get all follow-up calls out of the way, or get a new campaign started.

And, it’s a great opportunity for you to get an idea of how your reps are doing, to give them some coaching and live feedback, and to have your new reps shadow your more experienced ones. 

But what if your team is remote? 

Since most sales teams have gone remote, holding power hours with your team has become a bit more complicated. 

But, I would argue that having regular call blitzes is even more important now. 

It may be more complicated, but it’s not impossible.

All you need to do is find a tool that can support sales call blitzes, and the most obvious option would be a virtual sales floor since they are built specifically for cold-calling power hours. 

But, in case you don’t feel ready to get something as advanced and you’d like to dip your toes in the water first, you should look into the many video conferencing tools that can be used as a sales floor, the most popular ones including Zoom and Google Meet. 

But how will you know which platform to go with?

Which tool you will go with depends on many things, starting with the goals you have when it comes to holding power hours. Are they for coaching and live call listening? Or for starting a new campaign? 

Then, you should look into the tool’s connection quality and how easy it is to set it up. You don’t want your team losing time on lagging computers and trying to figure out how the platform works. 

And, last but not least, you should check out the features the tool offers. Do they align with your goals? Will they make your team’s workflow smoother?

Although there are many tools you should check out and compare, here we will focus on how to run a sales power hour on Google Meet.

What is Google Meet

Google Meet is a video conferencing platform where you can meet with your team, talk, share screens, and see each other by using your cameras. 

This tool is used by companies to increase team collaboration, for training, to hold remote workshops, for demoing, for webinars, and it has been used for sales power hours as well. 

Benefits & Features

Google Meet is already very familiar to many people, and it is designed in a way that it’s very user-friendly and simple. Not much time needs to be wasted to set it up and to figure out how to use it. 

The video conferencing, screen sharing, and chat functionalities allow teammates to listen to each other dial, build their team’s culture, and, with the right setup, it allows managers to give real-time coaching and feedback to reps. 

But, companies using Google Meet for work purposes should invest in the premium version because it comes with many extra benefits and features, compared to the normal, free version. 

The extra benefits you get with the premium package include:

1. Noise cancellation. The premium audio blocks out any outside noise automatically. It’s not uncommon to hear random external sounds when the whole team is working from their homes. You might hear a baby crying, construction work, a dog barking, and so on, and all of these sounds might distract you, especially when you’re trying to call prospects.

With Google Meet, reps get to block all these external distractions and concentrate on their work.

2. Breakout rooms. Managers can pull their reps into separate breakout rooms to give them feedback, to have a quick huddle, or to listen in on that rep’s calls. And, not only that, but new reps could use these rooms to meet up with more experienced reps when shadowing them, or when they are being trained. 

3. Attendance tracking. Tracking who took part in each meeting is possible with the premium version, making it easier for you to have an idea of who did and didn’t participate in each blitz. 

4. Meeting recording. After each power hour is done, managers can save a recording of it for future purposes. You could use these recordings to give further feedback to reps or to keep them as training material for newcomers.

5. Unlimited meeting time. The basic model only allows for meetings of one hour, but with the premium version, meetings can go up to 24 hours.

How to Set Up Google Meet

Activate it

To use Google Meet, you need to have a Google account. 

Getting a Google Workspace account, specifically, is recommended for companies who want to use Google Meet. Once you have created the account, ask a Google Workspace admin to enable access to Meet for your organization. 

To create a meeting, you need to be signed in to the Workspace, and then, anyone with a link will be able to join the meeting.

And, it is helpful to know that Google Meet is supported by Chrome Browser, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari. Make sure that all your team members have the latest version of whichever browser they are using. 

Once your team is about to hop on a meeting, everyone should allow Meet access to their microphone and camera. 

Audio setup

There are a few things reps should do to get the most out of Google Meet:

1. All participants should be wearing headphones during each call blitz, and they should activate noise cancellation.

2. The Google Meet audio should be connected to the headphones so that reps can remove them at any time, in case they are getting distracted by the sounds of the sales floor.

Also, this way prospects won’t be able to hear any external sounds or coaching. Managers will be able to “whisper” tips and feedback to their team members without being heard by the prospect.

3. The audio from the dialer the reps are using, however, should be coming from the built-in speakers of the computer. This way reps will be able to hear prospects even if they remove their headphones, and everyone attending the power hour will be able to listen to both sides of the sales call.

4. Everyone should have their mics muted to avoid disturbing each other, and whoever gets a connection with a prospect should unmute themselves so that the rest can listen in on their call. 

Screen setup

As with the audio, reps should adjust their screen setup to have the best possible workflow:

1. SDRs should work with two monitors if possible. Having Google Meet on one monitor would allow them to have easy access to muting and unmuting themselves when dialing, they could see their peers at all times, making them feel more like a part of a team, and they could have easier access to the chat area of Meet.

The second monitor should be used for dialing and any other sales tasks reps might have to maximize smooth workflow. 

2. In case SDRs are not able to have two screens, they should split their existing screen. In the same way as before, half of their screen should display their dialer, and the other half should display the sales floor.