First Meetings

There is a first substantive interaction to every multi-step sales process. Whether you label it a first sales meeting, discovery call or demo, the first interaction may be the biggest influence on whether you close a deal or not. That’s right; it’s not the magic words you try to come up with when a deal is slipping from your grasp that matters most, it is how you laid the proper foundation for the close that matters most. Do the right things in the beginning and you don’t have to grasp at straws at the end.

The first interaction clarifies your strengths and creates a solid foundation and springboard toward a close. Or, can be a great opportunity lost because your prospect didn’t grasp your value and enough reason to move forward.

Conduct future sales calls with a plan that communicates your value, positions you favorably against competitors and gains commitment for the next step in the sales process.

Here are some key concepts.

Closes hinge on the 2% difference. Your first meetings and discovery calls extract that 2% difference.

You win or lose most accounts by a hair. You need to be just a bit better than others to win, a 2% difference. It is in the earliest stages of your interactions that you extract and clarify that 2% difference so that when push comes to shove at the very end, you have the substance and specifics to nose out the competition.

Proposals should be confirmations, not explorations.

Think very carefully about this. Are your proposals explorations or confirmations? Proposals that end up closing are much more confirmations of concerns & terms already discussed, than fishing expeditions hoping to land the big one.

If you think of proposals as confirmations, then you must discuss the core components of your proposal to resolve differences or concerns. If you are collecting just enough basic information to deliver a pretty much standard boilerplate proposal, thinking you will find out what they think and adjust from there, your closing percentage is nowhere near where it could be.

Top producers and closers prepare questions; the rest prepare presentations

If you believe, and I think you should, that closes hinge on the 2% difference. And, that proposals should be confirmations, not explorations, then you will have to decide how best to find out what the 2% difference is in the mind of your buyers and have an actual conversation to confirm the major points of your proposal. Prepared presentations do not lead to that.

There shall be no proposal before its time

Like a fine wine, there should be no proposals before their time. Too many companies and individuals seem to think that making proposals is a goal. It’s a numbers game the knucklehead’s shout. But if the proposal is built on sand because the proper work hasn’t been done to include the things or confirm the things that would make it acceptable, it’s not a proposal; it is a waste of time.

You sell by appealing to actual needs and wants. Not by discussing what you think they need, not by trying to convince them of anything, but by drawing out issues that make the eyes of your prospects light up. Good questions, preparation, and practice make that possible.

Will the juice be worth the squeeze. What would it take for your prospect to buy? To change vendors?

You might think having a better widget or providing superior service is enough. That, if the prospect concludes that you are “better,” that you will get the deal. Nope.

Your prospect may conclude that you are a superior vendor, that you are worth the time, but many times, that is not enough. Your decision-maker has many many demands on their time. You might be “better” and yet not be more important than the other 25 demands on their time.

You might win the battle of “being better” yet lose the war if that difference is not more important than all the other demands on time and resources.

If there is no 2^nd meeting, there will be no check

Virtually all of my clients have a multi-step sales process. There are typically multiple meetings/interactions before a deal is finalized. If it typically takes 5 meetings/interactions to close a deal, and you don’t earn the 2^nd meeting, there will be no check.

During the discovery call or first sales meeting, you are not trying to make a sale so much as you are trying to lay a foundation for a sale. That foundation includes additional interactions. You had to “sell” the first meeting, and you also have to sell the 2^nd and 3^rd to make sure it happens.

Break the discovery call into three parts: The commercial, the questions, confirming the next step.

The Commercial

After very brief pleasantries you need to start working on your meeting objectives. You want to frame the discussion, orient to your strengths, relate credibility and minimize your weaknesses.

You might get down to business by saying something like this. “Would it help if I took a minute to review my background and why people choose to work with me?” The answer is always “Yes.”

I might say something like this. “Almost all of my clients, start their sales process with a face to face meeting or discovery call. When they get in the door at the right level, they can close, but if they are not at the right door at the right time, their competitors get the account. I have done work for recognizable names such as Wells Fargo that sent me into every one of the sales territories years ago and Jan-Pro, which is the #1 franchisor in the country and venture-backed startups, but most of my work is mid-size or emerging companies that need a process that works to get in the door. Have written two books on the topic and my scripting book was on Amazon’s list of top sales and selling books for more than three years. Every project is a bit unique, but the common themes are getting to the right people, scripting, communicating value, objections and follow-up. The most common comment I get from clients is “wish we had done this earlier.” Most of the quantum leaps come from organization, focus and consistently implementing the basics well rather than the latest greatest strategy of the month. Many companies who use me to get meetings, ask me to help them to convert those initial meetings to solid 2^nd and 3^rd steps. People seem to like that I actually did this before teaching it, set more than 2,000 C-Level appointments and is based on real world experiences rather than a standardized course. So that is a little about me, tell me about your situation and what you are trying to achieve.”

Notice in that spiel that I was trying to set the agenda, relate credibility and expertise and highlight the issues that are typical client hot buttons or play to my strengths. You should be doing the same.

The middle, questioning stage of the first sales conversation

You will sell and close based upon what people tell you matters to them.

At this stage, big picture, you are trying to…

– earn a commitment for the best next step you can get

– uncover specifics that motivate the buyers

– crystallize the options and consequences

– rub salt in the wounds.

Remember, the clock is ticking

First sales conversations have a time limit. It might be 30-60 minutes, maybe more, maybe less. But the bottom line is that you must flush out things sufficiently so that you can close on a solid next step that could lead to a close. You must make sure there is enough time left at the end for you to secure the next step.

“Oops, times up, got to go.” “I’ll be in touch, send me something, or my people will be in touch with your people,” often leads to the prospect never talking to you again.

“Great meetings,” after which the prospect vaporizes, were not that great.

How often has it happened? You sweat and with tremendous effort gain a commitment for a discovery call or first sales meeting. The meeting goes great, you are superior to their current situation, the pricing is right, and then they vaporize. You call and call to touch base again and hear nothing but crickets. Happens all the time.

You must properly choreograph your discovery calls or those “great meetings” will vaporize

Remember, if you don’t secure the 2^nd or 3^rd interaction, there is usually no deal. Your early interactions, particularly the first interaction is where you lay the foundation for the next meeting on the way to the close.

If your first meetings or discovery calls need to convert at a higher level, contact us to discuss.

1. How long does a typical first sales meeting of discovery call last?

Probably 30-60 minutes. As a general rule we have certain objectives to accomplish and we only have a certain amount of time. It is probably reasonable to assume that we will only have 40 minutes to accomplish our objectives. Plan and pace your first meeting to accomplish your sales objectives within 40 minutes. Be prepared for less.

Even if someone is very interested in what we have to offer, after an hour or so, energy levels start to wane. Even if we stop earlier than we could, we have laid the foundation for that additional interaction which can help advance the sale.

Example. If it normally it takes 3 or 4 interactions close a sale, even if the prospect is willing to get all the info in one session, it may not be in our best interest to give it all to them at one session, as we decrease the chance of future interactions, and future interactions are critical to creating the trust necessary to eventually close the deal.

When you are in control, you are conscious of how much time you have and you are conscious of where you are in relation to where you should be at that meeting.

2. The three stages of a first meeting.

– The commercial.
– Inquiry into understanding the past, present and future of the company and the individual we are speaking to.
– What is the next step. Ask for the next meeting.

3. The commercial.

After initial banter, first step is to present a brief commercial about your company or offering. You might ask the prospect if it would be helpful some brief background on the history of Mega Company Inc. Boom. Then go into brief commercial. Background only. No suggestion as to a recommendation or what might be best for them

The commercial should always end with a question. So a question might be… A. Have you ever used radio to market your business? B. What other marketing tools do you use? C. What are your major concerns in these areas?

Balance between going with the flow with the prospect and accomplishing our objectives for that interaction or meeting.

As a general rule if we lose control over what is discussed at that first meeting, we diminish the chance for a 2nd meeting or accomplishing our sales objectives.

A major sales environment is fluid and things rarely go as planned, but there are winning and losing behaviors. There are steps that are more likely to lead to a sale and steps that are less likely to lead to a sale or diminish the chances of a sale being made

If we lose control over the sales process and the prospect ends up determining what is discussed and what happens next, then the odds of the prospect and our company ending up on the same page and getting a check is minimal.

If we can’t keep close to our well planned roadmap to success we have to remember that the prospect doesn’t have a roadmap likely to lead to our company getting the business. They have no roadmap.

There is little risk to steering a prospect back to a process or stage that we know from experience is necessary for them to pass though, for the result to be that our company gets a check. If the prospect is unwilling to pass through those stages you have a choice, do you think that varying from proven experiences so greatly is going to positively impact the chance of advancing the sale.

It is important to have a clear idea of what we consider the successful first meeting to look like in a perfect world.

As we vary from that model, we can make a rational decision as to how far to go. We are in charge of determining how far to go, not the prospect.

There is a school of thought and some very very successful salespeople adhere to this with much success, is that if at any particular time the prospect will not engage in a discussion of what the salesperson wants to talk about, that the salesperson will end the sales process. He/she will explain that the purpose of this meeting is to determine if there is a mutual basis of doing business. If the prospect will not take the time to answer certain questions or engage in certain activities, they end the process as they feel that their needs are not being met.

They simply state that the purpose of the session is to determine whether they will be able to do business together at any particular time. The objective is to mutually decide whether we are going to be able to work together. You need to get information to determine whether or not it makes sense to work together. And if the prospect will not talk about what needs to be discussed the meeting is over. Without certain info the odds of closing the account is low low low, so why bother?

All too often salespeople are afraid to let go. Most of the time because they don’t have clarity about the circumstances most likely to lead to a sale and the circumstances that are probable doom and wasted time.

Being direct about our purpose is not a problem. Being direct, saying something like “Look, we are trying to make a decision as to whether it makes sense for both of us to have a business relationship, in order to do that we need certain information, if you are not willing to share that information that is fine, but we would choose not to invest additional time pursuing a relationship,” is not a problem.

4. The inquiry phase.

What has happened in the past, what is happening now, what are the plans for the future? For the company and for the individual we are meeting.

Write down the specific questions we need to ask as we are focusing on specific behaviors.

What is the company history with this type of service?
Have you personally done a lot of work with this service?
What have you accomplished in the past with this service.
Did it work
How happy were you personally with the way things worked out?
How did you decide that?
Why did you select that process?

As most people have worked with companies like us in the past it would be important to ask questions about that history.

Ask how and why questions. We should ask questions in depth about the past, as this gives us our first clues as to how individual and company are thinking,

When asking about the past, indirectly you are also asking how they selected a particular vendor.

Then we ask questions about the present

What are you trying to accomplish now?
How does your company usually operate in this area?
How do you usually do this?
What are you doing now in regard to these services?
Why are you doing it this way?
Why did you choose this method?
How is it being used?
How is it working from your point of view?
Why does the organization track this information?

Enable them to talk about how they view the present situation.

Get more info with the question .. is there anything else?

It is always about the individual and the organization

As to future questions, we now are trying to lay a foundation for our request

What would you personally like to accomplish in the future?
What is the company trying to get done in the long term in this area?
How would you like to accomplish that?
When would you like to achieve that goal?
How will you be evaluating your current system?

Point is to develop all the info necessary to move the sale forward or to make a mutual decision not to, at least for the time being.

We may very well conclude that the odds of us winning this piece of business is not high, or they are not close to making a decision, so it may be best to make a mutual decision not to pursue a piece of business at any particular time.

Many times there is a reluctance to go into depth with these types of questions. Many times salespeople hesitate to give the prospect an opportunity to express any doubts, fears or regrets. In our environment it is important for us to know their doubts and fears so that we can address them or else we will not get where we want to go.

Many times a price objection is really something else being masked. When you follow this process, you are giving people the opportunity to vent the real issues.

In a major sales environment, it has to be assumed that there will be multiple contacts. We have to assess when is the most appropriate time to ask the right questions.

Additional meetings give you an additional opportunity to zero in on the prospects needs. If we try to accomplish too much at a first meeting, we can “skip stages” and going through each stage well is a prerequisite for making the sale.

There usually will be some sort of summary. When you said… your comments… it makes sense for me to put together a preliminary outline… to demonstrate the following.

We should come up with some sort of template to obtain commitment for the next session.

What is the recommendation for what may happen next in a way where they are likely to agree to a next session?

Everything we say is in only to relation to what the prospect says during the meeting.

Sometimes the client has difficulties they don’t know they have and there is a temptation to describe solutions to problems which they have not expressed, important to focus and respond specifically to what they say and the concerns they express.

Always ask for the next appointment.

What do you consider to be acceptable next steps after a first sales meeting with a new prospect?

It is absolutely not, we will do something and you will no nothing.
Or, we will all think about it.

They will put info together, provide reports?

Set up meeting with additional decision maker or influencer.

What do we request from prospect between first and 2nd meeting?

Ask for specifications

Ask for conference call between that person and practice manager in preparation of next meeting.

We should clarify the range of requests we make of the prospects. The more they interact with us, the more time they spend with us, the more comfortable they get and the greater are the odds that they will eventually write a check.

Have a game plan for the first meeting that lays a solid foundation for your sales process.

Be willing to walk away if they will not sufficienty participate in the process you know is most likely to result in a sale.

1. Very easy to rush through beginning phases of a sales call.

2. Very easy to talk about what we want to talk about.

3. Difference between sales efficiency vs sales effectiveness.

Sales efficiency: getting in front of the right prospect at the right cost at the right
cost. And spending the right amount of time with them and no more.

Sales effectiveness: Converting that suspect to a client.

4. Focus on what the client is telling us vs focusing on our offering.

Put focus on eliciting from the prospect where they are, what they need, what their future looks like. The focus should not be on what you can provide them.

5. No sales effort is better than the foundation it is built on.

We are focusing on two components of sales behavior. First, help people uncover and develop strong needs and position our services to meet those needs. Second, build value which differentiates us from the competition.

6. The emphasis is on helping the people we talk to come to certain conclusions or get to a certain place without us telling them.

If we tell them a conclusion it can have zero impact. But if through a proper questioning strategy, they can come to the conclusion we want, it has a great impact on them and facilitates our making a sale.

7. Much of the buying decision has to do with trust and credibility, and that can only come through interaction. One of the objectives in the initial sales call is to lay the foundation for future interaction. We should create the opportunities for interaction. That interaction will make people more comfortable with us and reduce the risk factor in making the decision to go with our company.

8. Query: where is your strongest competition? Does it come from other vendors or from the prospects status quo?

If our competition is the prospects status quo, we have to have a strategy to make people uncomfortable with the status quo.

9. We should know…

How to create the perception that it would be worthwhile to meet with us again.
How a successful sales call differs from an unsuccessful sales call.
How we differentiate our current sales behavior from our own future desired sales
behaviors.
The specific sales behaviors which have the most impact on our prospects.

10. It is important at every stage to get to the next stage. If we give too much at any stage, it may not help us in getting to the next stage.

Plan questions rather than presentations.

They focus on larger strategic sales rather than quick hits.

Have different strategies for different competitors.

Get quickly to business rather than spend time on small talk.

Ask questions with impact rather than unfocused questions unrelated to result sought.

Hold back from giving service details and features too early.

Do not talk about capabilities unless important to the prospect.

Do not simply give a capability dump

Always ask for the next meeting.

 

How’s this for being put on the spot?

I’m speaking to an annual meeting of a large international manufacturing organization. Top management and salespeople from around the world in front of me. The CEO of the company impolitely interrupts my remarks to demand an immediate answer to a question.

No warning. No notice. No thinking about it. In front of hundreds.

The question?

“Tell me… right now… the one thing we should be doing to significantly increase our sales?

The answer? (Fortunately for me, it was an easy one.)

I said without hesitation… “Ask better questions.”

You see, it is through the questions we ask that we uncover true buying motives, how they have decided things in the past and all the specific conditions that must be satisfied for them to buy from us.

Two important points about conducting a successful sales appointment. It could be with a prospective or existing customer. You could be renewing an order or cross-selling something new.

1. People will spill their guts and tell us exactly how to sell them… if we enable them to do so. People love to talk about themselves. Let them. Steer them. Draw from them information you can use to close.

2. We close on the details. The questions we ask are important. The follow-up questions are even more so.

You get complete information, and you get the details you will ultimately be using to close, when you ask good follow-up questions.

Is there anything else? And that means what?

If your competition is getting more information and details then you are, who is more likely to get the deal?

Ask good questions.

Make sure you ask better follow-up questions.

Choreograph your questions and follow-up questions with more care than a Baryshnikov Ballet.

Here are 30 questions to stimulate your thinking about how you can obtain information that will help you close more business.

1.Project forward 12 months. What is different about your business? What do you want to accomplish?

2. What are your major challenges?

3. Describe your process for… ?

4. Are you experiencing problems with… ?

5. What are your customers telling you about…?

6. How much staff time does it take…?

7. Do you have any concerns in the area of… ?

8. Do you have any in-house expertise for…?

9. Describe your biggest unmet needs in terms of… ?

10. If someone needs what you offer, what keeps them from buying from you?

11. Are there any common misperceptions customers/clients/accounts have about your business?

12. What are the most significant benefits people get when buying from you?

13. What are your two most important sales events each year?

14. Where does most of your business come from? How much?

15. Is your business experiencing the kind of growth you need/want? Why not?

16. How are you addressing this?

17. Is there anything else I should know/we should discuss before I make some recommendations/discuss some options with you?

18. Is there anything else?

19. And the significance of that to you is what?

20. Are there other individuals involved in this decision?

21. How did you decide that?

22. Why did you select that process?

23. Why did you change vendors?

24. Why did you select that vendor? That marketing method? That process?

25. What is the company history with…?

26. Were you personally happy with this decision? With the way things worked out?

27. What are you doing now in regards to… ?

28. Why are you doing it this way?

29. What would you personally like to accomplish in the future?

30. We have all had bad experiences we would like to avoid. Have you had any bad experiences with this you don’t wish to repeat?

Remember, good questions are important.

The follow-up questions are even more important.

copyright 2012 Scott Channell