The Meeting

This is where the rubber meets the road so to speak.

You've called, you've emailed, you stopped in, you've made nice with the gate keeper and now you've finally got a meeting.

Of course this can vary some depending on what industry your in, but the underlying principles are all the same, sales 101.

Before you meet with the prospect you should do some research before hand.

If your selling B2B, know what industry they are in, what products they sell, how long they have been in business, maybe what their best selling products and services are, what are their worse selling products and services, executive team, etc.

You could literally go on forever researching a company to the point you may know more about their own business than they do.

What if I told you this is a bad idea?

Yes, it's important that you research your prospect prior to meeting with them. You don't want to come in completely green, and you also want to have a rough plan of attack coming in.

One thing you don't want to do though, is steal your prospects thunder! Let me explain what I mean...

When your preparing for your meeting, leave some things to be desired. Make sure you actually have some questions to ask your customer. 

This is EXTREMELY important because people love to talk about themselves, and that is what you must remember, your prospect is a person, and he/she loves to talk about himself.

This is an interview, not so much a sales call. Your job is to learn as much about the customer personally and professionally as possible to serve the means of helping the customer, not your pockets.

Your pockets getting fatter is the RESULT of you helping the customer so that should be your main focus. 

So your first objective in that meeting is to make a friend. Let's briefly go through some ways we can do that:

Ask about their day

This one is rather simple. I would play this off very casually, very humanly. As I step into the prospects home or office, while I'm setting up my tablet, laptop, projector or what have you I'd just ask "So how's the day been?"


In my experience most people, respond nicely and it opens the door to a nice human conversation.

Ask about their family

This gives you a chance to find out who the most important people in their life are. It also opens the door for you to talk about your family. Wife, husband, children, brothers, sisters etc.


Remember the goal is to make a friend. 

Ask about their work

If your in b2b and you already know what kind of work they do, ask them how they got into it, if it's a high level executive your meeting with, as him how he got to where he is. What was his career path.

Ask what they do for fun/recreation

A nice tip, is to take a look around their home or office. Chances are you'll see something there that speaks to what they like to do, or what their interests are.

All of these things all serve the same purpose to "humanize" the experience for the customer.

You don't want to be seen as just a "salesperson" because you know just as well as I do, nobody wants to be sold, but people love to buy. 

Now, sometimes your going to come across a prospect that may not entertain your attempts to befriend him. In those instances you must be prepared to get right down to business. These types of customers want to know why your there, and why it should matter to them, so be ready. 

After you have hopefully developed some solid rapport with the customer it's time to start with the interview.

In your research you should have been able to develop some questions that help you determine what the prospects needs are, pain points, or desires and from the answers to those questions, you can determine if your product or service can help that customer.

This is where your integrity as a salesman comes into to play. 

While conducting the interview, if you determine that your product or service may not be right for the customer, in my educated opinion, it's your professional duty to NOT SELL THAT CUSTOMER!

This is how you reduce churn, and gain more referrals. 

When you are honest and transparent in this way, you gain the customers trust and they will send you business. 

Now what if you determine that your product or service will actually fill your customers needs? What's next? Well, you close the deal of course.


The Close


I'm not a fan of too many closing tactics or tricks. 

If you've done your job properly throughout the whole process the close should be simple and natural. 

After I have put together a quote for the customer based on all the information I've gathered throughout the whole interaction, I may start with something like this "Ok, Mr./Mrs. Customer, I think we can be a benefit to you, this is what we can do for you..."

Then I will proceed with all the features and benefits of my offer. I'll also tie back to different things the customer told me in our conversation to show why this would be important for the customer. 

***WARNING***

NEVER, and I repeat NEVER start off with the price of your offer. 

I've seen countless sales reps makes this mistake and I've never seen it work out well. 

When you start with the price before giving the customer all of the features and benefits of your offer the customer is already focused on the price now. 

Now they are going to make their decision based on price, not on value. You want the customer to be focused on value. 

This is why I believe you should always leave the price for the end. After you have shown how much value your able to offer, and you were able to tie it back to the customer to show why it's beneficial, the price will not be main focus of the customers decision. 

Conclusion

Well, there it is guys and gals. That is the sales process from beginning to end. 

Of course there are infinite variables to selling that can present different problems to be solved. 

We are all in different industries, markets, states, retail, B2B, online, etc. but it's all still sales and selling. 

I'd love to talk with all of you on a more regular basis and help us all become the sales rock-stars we where born to be and make a ton of money doing it.

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Paxton E. Morgan

This is the first time I have decided to take all of my 15 years of experience selling in the field and give this information to new and old burnt out reps to help them increase their sales. 

Paxton E. Morgan