E213: Why the First Meeting is a Make or Break Opportunity for Trade Sales & How to Avoid Losing Contracts: Sales, Leadership, Trade

In this episode, we're going to unpack why the first meeting is absolutely a make or break opportunity for trade sales and how you can avoid losing contracts. Welcome to Sales Growth Made Simple, the show helping 7 to 8 figure trade, construction and industry sales and business leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, and over the last 15 years, I've helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses and generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes. Let's get started. Today we are going to zero right in hard to why that first meeting is just so important. Well, not just for any business, but particularly for trade businesses. We're gonna have a look at the 3 things that you need to make sure you agree on or certainly understand before you leave that first meeting. And of course then unpack what a great sale looks like if you get those 3 things right. We certainly spend lots of time in this podcast understanding and providing different perspectives on how to really engage customers throughout our sales process. Today I was interviewed on a podcast in the US and really quite funny, I had a kangaroo followed by a fox followed by a great big white Labrador trot in front of my window as we were doing that podcast and the only in Australia tag rolled straight out of that. But in that podcast, one of the things that the host asked me was about how important it is to simplify the sales process and really focus on what's important and what actually makes a difference to getting sales. And my comment was very much that we can have detailed sales processes, we can have 10-step frameworks, we can have even 5-step framework. But the challenge that I have faced myself across my career, and perhaps you can think about this from your end, you know, that certainly lots of salespeople have faced, is that information overwhelm is real when it comes to selling. As soon as we walk into meeting with a customer and we need to remember a whole pile of things about our process, what we do now, what we do next, what we do at the end, we lose attention on exactly what the customer's talking about. So we spend all our time worrying about what we're going to say next and not enough time worrying about, okay, well, what's important to the customer? What am I going to get right here to close that deal? And my experience is that in trade businesses in particular, with so much going on, this is actually even more of a concern. So you'll notice that we're spending a lot of time around how we engage the customer, and that's to make sure that as business leaders, as salespeople, as particularly trade business leaders that we are really dialing into the simple things that if we get right are going to move the dial. And in my experience, that's how we make that 20 to 30% jump in sales really quickly, by focusing on less things but getting them right in the simplest manner possible. So today we're going to talk again about that first meeting with a slightly different perspective that will help you really nail those moments when you're in front of customers and you know that leaving a good impression will last. So I worked previously in an industry where we had 7 seconds to influence a purchase decision. 7 seconds between choosing us and someone else. Now that was a really interesting product category. It was condoms. There's a whole other story and lifetime around that. And certainly in many industries, we have a little bit more time than that to have decisions made about us. However, the piece there that's omnipresent or really prevalent in every single engagement is that first impressions do last. And our aim as salespeople, and certainly when we work with our customers, our aim is to consistently help them be chosen early. So to nail that first impression, to really make it stick so that when a customer sees us, certainly by the end of our first meeting, their thoughts are, great, I've chosen Ben. I've chosen him as the one that I want to work with, his business is the one I want to work with. And from there on, the process becomes a tick box. Yes, he's met my requirements. Yes, he specified the right product or the right service. Yes, his price is right. Yes, his delivery is right. Yes, he's done everything I want. Versus when we haven't made a great first impression, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad first impression, but when we haven't stood out, it becomes a process of, is it Ben? Is it Bob? Is it Brad? Is it Ben? Is it Bob? Is it Brad? Right, constantly thinking about who they're going to choose. So the idea behind making a great first impression is quite clearly that they stick, but also that we can actually win or lose deals in those early moments of engaging with a customer. And yes, it's that significant. I've told stories, number of stories around customers that I've engaged with or suppliers I've engaged with before. And certainly the one most recently that hasn't left me is I had two people come to my door. One looked me in the eye, was presented really well, said hello, said thank you for having him, versus the second supplier that had a lingering smell of cigarette smoke, didn't present badly, but didn't have that crispness and that engagement that really made me stand up and go, oh wow, You're here for me. Now, in the end, I chose that first supplier, and I'll be really open and honest that I chose them very much based on that first interaction. So when it comes to the top things that you can do to make sure you nail that first meeting, the areas that I really want you to think about today are, first of all, that first impression, which we've just gone through, presenting yourself right. We've gone through this a lot across this podcast series, and we'll continue to do so, but I want to dive a little bit deeper into the first meeting than that. And the first piece is to make sure that you are challenging yourself not to leave that first meeting, that site visit, that video call, that phone call, whatever it may be, but not to leave that meeting until you have a very clear scope of works. So in simpler terms, in terms of scope of works, that we do not leave that meeting until we are absolutely clear what our customer wants. So is delivery speed most important to our customer? Is there something really unique about their commercial facility or their commercial service or their house or their investment property that we need to take into account? Is quality most important? How impactful is price? What else is really important in them in that scope of works? Because when we can get really early alignment with our customer around exactly what's important to them and what the scope of works looks like, we are setting ourselves up to close a deal later on. The best closers get deals done in the first meeting. That is something that has lived with me for a very long period of time and absolutely stands true in this instance. So number 1 here is don't leave site without a really clear and detailed scope of works. And the important lever here for you to pull is to be repeating that back to your customer, right? Repeat back exactly what you've learned. Is there anything missing? And make sure we're on page. The second piece after that is to challenge yourself around how you can quote as quickly as possible from that point in time. Can you quote on the spot? The lower the value of the project, the more I'd encourage this. The simpler the project, the more I'd encourage this. Can you quote on the spot? And I had this conversation with one of our customers this week. They're a contracting business that has a reasonable-sized team, and his response to me was, Ben, I can sometimes quote on the spot, but the rest of the times I need to quote afterwards. And my challenge to him was to think about if he's able to quote on the spot with a 5 or 10-minute break between the inspection and quoting. And what I mean by here is a conversation with the customer that says, fantastic, thank you very much. We confirm that scope of works, we would you mind if I sat at your table for 5 or 10 minutes and I'll be able to bring together exactly what we need to do for you to bring this project to life. Won't always work, but it's certainly, it's a great middle ground to say, hey, I can't quote immediately on the spot, but I can take a moment, pull together my thoughts, you know, enter in a couple of numbers and get that quote out. That is again a better result. While it's not as good as quoting immediately on the spot, it's a better result than going away and resending that quote. And then as we drive down from quoting on the spot to quoting very quickly once you've done that, that audit or that site visit, we then move into quoting the next day and the day after. And the longer it takes us to quote, generally speaking, the lower close rates tend to be, particularly in the trade and construction industry. So the second piece I really want to encourage to challenge yourself on is around how you can quote as quickly as possible on the day. Now that requires some good systems, and that's one that you're very welcome to pick up the phone to me and talk through, because there are so many great pieces of software out there now that will allow you to do that. Okay, and the third piece here when it comes to nailing that first meeting is agreeing on what your next steps are gonna be with the customer. Now that doesn't mean you've closed the deal, but what it does mean is you both are really clear around what happens next. The reason this is impactful is that the customer leaves the meeting without any uncertainty as what they're gonna get from you. And in most things in this world where we have a known quantity, a known outcome, we think like, know, and trust, but where we have something that we know is gonna happen, generally people are more confident around what to do next. Generally people have, let's call it baseline levels of anxiety or worry or concern when they know exactly what's happening next. And generally we have a more positive outcome when we can be really clear on who or what is going to happen from here. So agreeing with the customer on what you're going to do next. I'm going to come back and quote. I'm going to quote and call you. We're going to jump on it on a video call if you're able to do that. I'm going to come back with samples. Whatever that next step is, by agreeing on it with a customer, you create a great first impression as you're leaving that meeting. And that known entity we speak about, i.e., being chosen early, it really comes into play. So if we think about taking this back to those Topline principles around really nailing that first meeting, around really trying to make sure we're the one that customers choose early and often, then we really need to look at how we nail that first impression. And the 3 things that we've gone through today around nailing that first impression are number 1, not leaving site until you're really clear on the scope of works, what the customer wants and what you're going to do. The second piece there is to challenge yourself around how quickly you can quote. The faster you quote, generally the higher close rates will be, particularly in that trade construction industry type of segments. And the final one here is agreeing on what your next actions will be. So what you're both going to do from here, so we have some certainty around what's coming next. So that's the key focus for today. 3 things to challenge yourself on. I'm hopeful you can move the dial on one of those because far and above the most common piece of feedback I get from trade sales leaders and, and business leaders is that they spend way too much time quoting and don't win enough of those deals. It's super frustrating for them, but it also can burn a lot of cash. And in most of these businesses, if they don't change something now, they generally get the results again and again and again. So what we offer on this podcast is a free quote audit, a mini sales process audit where we'll pinpoint exactly why you're not winning more jobs and what you need to do to increase those close rates quickly. So you can click on the link, it's at the top of our show notes. It's one click, takes you straight in to make some time, really painless. And, and without doubt, I will guarantee that it moves the dial for your business. So please feel free to click on that free quote audit link. Otherwise, really look forward to seeing you later on this week. That's it for today. Please keep being 1% better each and every day. It makes all the difference. Bye for now.