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I’ll then share more about Wrike and give you a demo of the technology. If you adhere to this on EVERY call you can significantlyincrease your chances of closing a deal. Be prepared to answer questions about their business. The goal of your first conversation is to engage the prospect enough so that they agree to a second conversation with you. If you do these five things in your meeting, you’ll have a good chance of continuing the conversation and getting that second date. In the first meeting you want your prospect to leave excited-excited about the possibilities and excited about working with you. Buyers today don’t want to have to tell providers what to do.
Rarely will the prospect outright refuse to do so. But, even if the prospect eventually cancels the meeting, at least you will remain in communication and have the opportunity to re-schedule. So do your research, understand their business, and show them how your product or service can make their lives easier. Because with an efficient and streamlined workflow, you spend less time on mundane and repetitive tasks and more time nurturing prospects into sales. So spend some time reviewing some of the scheduling software out there. Custom branded gifts to sweeten the deal, spend some time researching what works best for your audience. Use a maturity model and offer personalized maturity assessments to effectively measure how good a fit a prospect is while providing value at the same time.
Last Time We Spoke
Sales managers can gain unique perpsectives on hiring and developing more effective sales teams. You should also set the stage for the next steps in your sequence by letting your prospect know that you’ll follow up in X days if you don’t hear back.
Don’t you hate meetings that take up an hour of your time, and you leave without even really understanding why you met? You’re either nodding your head or rolling your eyes right now because you’ve been there. However, you don’t want your prospects to have that experience when you meet for a discovery call or a demo. Because the reps never took the time to research our company for the purpose of asking relevant questions. Why show us the latest promotional items for grocery stores if we don’t have grocery clients and don’t have an interest in targeting that vertical? Instead of taking the time to get to know our challenges and understand how they might be able to help us, the reps went through a checklist. They were not interested in increasing our sales with current clients or helping us gain new business.
End The Prospect Meeting With Clear Next Steps
To give you a little background about my role, I work with some of our largest enterprises that have fairly complex marketing programs and teams. These companies are tasked with large goals yet often have limited resources and need to find ways to execute more work faster while still maintaining quality and visibility. Building a relationshipwith your prospect to then alleviate that anxiety puts you in a very strong position to lead the meeting and the deal cycle. 5) It gives them an understanding of how all other meetings will be conducted.
Not surprisingly, the survey also found that the worst side effect of poor sleep is daytime fatigue the following day, which means we are less likely to be productive. To avoid being late, use Google maps to plan out your journey to find the fastest direct route . If the journey takes 25 minutes, leave at least 45 minutes before, allowing room for any delays. And if you do arrive early, you can use the time to have a quick run through of your pitch while waiting in the car. One thing to take into account is that your questions may, in turn, prompt further questions from the other party.
Whatever the context the meeting was set up under, be sure to deliver on that promise. If you set the meeting in this context, be sure to deliver on your promise. Nothing kills trust, credibility, and a sale quicker than the bait and switch. If the potential client is currently working, what could you learn about their company or industry? This is an easy way to showcase that you’ve taken your time to do your homework.
Dummies helps everyone be more knowledgeable and confident in applying what they know. It’s hard work to understand all the cool things your product does. Just cover the real high points, and try to focus on the stuff that they need to know. Doing so sets the expectation that you will have questions. It also sets the expectation that your prospect’s participation and attention is critical.
You aren’t trying to guide your prospect to agree with you. You’re trying to understand them and their business goals. It provides the prospect reassurance that they will get what they need from the meeting as well. And it sets up expectations for what will happen at the end of the call. It lays out from the beginning that there will be next steps if they are interested and that you will provide guidance .
Ways To Prepare For Your Next Sales Meeting And Get More Clients!
Before launching into your pitch during the meeting, ask your prospects about their business. Gather information to organize what you say in the most compelling way possible. Who are their biggest competitors, and how do they try to distinguish their company from them? What qualities do they look for in people with whom they do business? By asking questions, you can better frame your pitch when the conversation transitions to how you can help them. This process also allows you to avoid aspects of your planned pitch in which prospects are simply not interested. It can help you save time and keeps the conversation focused on what is truly important to them.
Who should be in a discovery meeting?
A discovery meeting is a discussion between one or more team members from your business or sales team and a lead or potential customer. As the individual or team offering a product or a service, this meeting helps you understand what gaps exist for your potential customers and how you can fill those gaps.
When emailing, in addition to restating your product’s value to their business, enrich their day with valuable knowledge. You can add value to your prospect’s day by leveraging the materials your marketing team has already created for you. At the end of every meeting, save five minutes to discuss next steps. Was this a killer demo that got your prospect this excited about your product? Decide who on their team needs to be looped in next and when you’ll reconvene to discuss their trial or purchase. And make sure your prospect knows — and agrees on — what’s next before they hang up. That’s over half of all prospect meetings that buyers think are a waste of time.
Learn The Top 6 Strategies For Reducing Your Meeting No Show Rate
A while back, he explained how he trains salespeople at firms like HP to ask for an appointment. This can happen at a networking event, during a cold call, or when you call a prospect who’s shown interest by accessing your website. This “initial close” is important, because once you’re on the prospect’s agenda, you have your proverbial foot in the door. Probably the most important close (as well as the one that’s most misunderstood) comes early in the sales cycle, when you ask a new prospect for an appointment. One way to look at selling is as a series of closes–each of which moves the opportunity to the next step. According to the Great British Sleep survey of more than 20,000 participants, thoughts such as worries about the following day are the main reason for sleepless nights.
- Secondly, the introduction is to ensure your prospect understands you’re there to learn more about the business to figure out whether you can help them .
- That’s not a professional look or a great way to treat a future customer.
- You aren’t trying to guide your prospect to agree with you.
- The only way to know this is to sense it, which is easier in person than on the phone.
- The fact that they agreed to meet with you in the first place is a great sign.
Reach out to two or three of your shared contacts to get as much information as possible about your prospects and their companies. Ask your mutual connections about the prospects’ buying styles, and what makes them tick. The purpose of today’s meeting is to give you a high-level sense of what we do.
When you’re done with your sales meeting, it’s important to send an email thanking your meeting attendee/s for their time. That’s not a professional look or a great way to treat a future customer. However, not enough sales professionals are actually prioritizing their follow ups, and because of this, they’re losing the momentum they generated during an awesome meeting.
How To Ask For An Initial Meeting
Be professional, look professional, sound professional, and don’t deliver a canned presentation in the first meeting . First seek to understand, and you will have plenty of time to be understood . Demonstrate you know something about the prospect’s business . Sign up to Thrive with SuperOffice to learn the secrets we have learned helping growing companies turn relationships into revenue. Read the company website thoroughly and make sure that you understand their mission and objectives.
What are prospects leads?
A lead is an unqualified contact, while a prospect is a qualified contact who has been moved into the sales process. To turn a lead into a prospect, walk them through the sales qualification process to assess if your company’s products or services are the right solution to their problem.
If you make a commitment during this stage of the sales process, you 100 percent must meet your own deadlines, or risk losing credibility and respect from the prospect. A salesperson should also establish action items. As you finish the meeting, you should itemize what you are going to do and what the prospect is going to do.
There are products and times where it’s appropriate to ask for the order on the first call but inEnterprise software salesit would often be ridiculous. What it really means is that you must always be moving onto the next step in the sales process.
This way, you gain a commitment before you leave the meeting. Many salespeople do not close deals because they fail to execute on a consistent and well-thought-out follow-up strategy after a prospect meeting.
So if you want to hook prospects for a meeting, just show them that you’re all about the experience. For example, you could advertise your product or service on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, consistently and frequently reaching prospects that way. And the more your brand is exposed to prospects, the higher the chance they’ll be interested in a meeting. 51% of buyers will connect with a seller if they don’t feel like they’re being sold to, keep this in mind when you’re reaching out.
Instead, the salesperson will redirect to the Letter of Understanding and offer high-level figures for the prospect to consider. The prospect likely is not sure what to ask for next, or they did not read the Letter of Understanding to confirm what was agreed on during the first meeting. One simple question to ask while you have the prospect’s attention is if they could pull up the calendar on their phone to schedule the next meeting.