Your first meeting. What to do, what to ask and how to LISTEN 

So, you secured your first meeting with a potential prospect.  What should you do?  The traditional sales approach is to prepare a powerpoint slide, walk on in to a meeting and present.  Make sure you include all your customers company logo’s and 50 slides about why you are the best in the world.

This type of approach is balony and here is why:

  1. Your prospect see’s this from every sales person who pitches to them
  2. The prospect does not care about your company
  3. Another boring meeting with powerpoint will not increase your chances of a sales

Take this analogy.  If a sales person was selling you an air conditioning unit for your house would you like it if the sales person:

  • Spoke about how great their company was, how excellent their product is.   or
  • Spoke about the value your house will get if you install such a product

The latter is a more compelling pitch.  Here is some hard truth:

Your prospect does not care about your business, team, previous customers or your combined experience.  They only care about the results your will bring them that will add value to their business.

A first meeting should consist of:

  • You gaining more information about their business
  • Finding out if you can help them (Yes! thats not an automatic “we can help everyone we meet” that most companies have)
  • Finding out if this opportunity is worth your time
  • Demonstrate you add value

How do you add value?  You must demonstrate:

  • How past customers did things prior to working with your firm
  • The problems they encountered in their operations
  • The business ramifications of these problems
  • The specific value and business outcomes they’ve realized as a result of your relationship

You must ask questions and aim to find out:

  • Whether the prospect has a problem, what it is and if you can help
  • Their strategy, plan and what they are doing in the next 12 months
  • How they make decisions
  • Whether you can provide unique business value

The next post will cover questions in more depth, a very important post! Stay tuned.