What to look at in a weekly sales review when you only have thirty minutes

Run the weekly review from a list, not from stories. Spend ten minutes on new enquiries nobody has touched, ten on quotes with no reply, five on stuck deals, and five on who does what before next week. Every item ends with a name and a date. If a deal is discussed and nothing is written down, the meeting has not happened.

Why thirty minutes and no more?

A longer review turns into a reading of reports, and people start preparing slides instead of calling buyers. Thirty minutes forces one rule: only deals that need a decision are discussed. The rest is read from the sheet beforehand.

It also suits a small firm. With three or four people holding open deals, you get about five minutes each, which is enough when the question is "what is the next step" and not "tell me everything".

What goes on the one page?

Pull three lists from your enquiry register or CRM before anyone sits down. Do it by hand if you must.

A. Enquiries in the last 7 days with no reply or call logged
B. Quotes sent more than __ days ago with no response
C. Deals that have not changed stage since last review

You set the number in list B, and it depends on the trade. A made-to-order fitting might be chased after five days, a machine quote after fifteen. Write the number on the sheet so nobody argues about it in the room.

How do the thirty minutes run?

Ten minutes for list A. Ask of each name: "Who has not been called, and why?" The output is a name and a call time against every line, agreed in the room.

Ten minutes for list B. Ask: "What was the last contact, and what is the next?" The output is a follow-up date, or a decision to close the quote.

Five minutes for list C. Ask: "What does the buyer need that we have not given?" The output is one action, or a move to lost with a reason.

Five minutes to read back. Each person states their actions aloud. Anyone who cannot repeat theirs was not given a clear one. Copy the list into the register before anyone leaves.

For example: a mosquito-net installer in Davangere

Imagine an installer in Davangere who fits mosquito nets and window grills for homes. The owner held a Friday meeting where each of three staff described their week. It ran an hour and ended with "keep following up".

Everyone spoke of what they had done, and it always sounded like plenty. Nobody was asked what had not been done. The owner switched to the three lists. In the first meeting, list A held nine names. Six had come from an online directory over the previous weekend, and nobody had been assigned to the directory. List B showed four quotes to housing associations, ₹7 lakh in all (invented figures), that had gone silent after the committee date passed.

Both got an action before the meeting ended: a name against each directory lead with a call time that afternoon, and a call to each association to ask for its next committee date. The result was partial. Two associations gave dates, one had already chosen another installer, and one never picked up. From then on, the owner stopped asking for accounts of the week and asked for dates, and the meeting got shorter.

What should you keep out of the review?

Do not review every open deal; only those on a list. Do not argue about the month's forecast; that is a separate job. Keep targets and incentives out as well: once a target is on the table, the meeting turns into a defence of numbers, and people stop saying which deals are stuck. Talk about targets on a separate day. Do not correct a person in front of the others. If someone missed a follow-up, ask what stopped them, because the cause is often a missing handover or a task nobody owned.

Do not add a fourth list. The value of three is that anyone can read them in two minutes. When the meeting has more items than minutes, people go back to talking.

What if your records are not good enough yet?

Then the first review is about the records. Spend the thirty minutes agreeing where each enquiry will be written and by whom. Run the lists from whatever you have, even a shared spreadsheet, and expect the first few meetings to show gaps. A lead with no record of a reply is a lead nobody answered, or an answer nobody wrote down, and both need fixing.

When is a weekly review too much?

If you hold two or three open deals and you are the only one who touches them, a standing meeting is a ritual. Look at the three lists alone for ten minutes on a Monday and be done. If most of your sales are walk-in and closed on the spot, the lists will be empty and the meeting pointless; review lost enquiries instead. The weekly review earns its place when several people hold deals that stay open for days or weeks, and when things have slipped before without anyone noticing.

What next?

Build the three lists for this week from whatever records you have, and send the action list to everyone straight after the meeting, so the next one begins with it and not a blank page. Try three meetings in this format before changing anything. The review is part of the sales process, the numbers it should draw on are in which sales KPIs to track, and if you want a second pair of eyes on your first sheet, sales metrics and KPI development is the work. You can tell us what you need to start.