Episode 107: Nailing the Meet and Greet to Close Sales Before You Even Quote

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And engaged teams, stronger sales Teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams. The place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. Now, we talk about sales processes a lot. In my line of work there isn't a workshop that goes by or a team that I work with where where I don't talk heavily around the importance of getting your sales process right now, spoiler alert. We are not gonna deep dive into a sales process today. However, I do wanna talk a little bit about some important steps when it comes to really nailing our customer meetings. But before I do so, I really wanna go back to that piece around our sales process where for me having worked with hundreds and hundreds, in fact I think there was numbers about 300 salespeople last year and you know, thousands over the last 20 years where I see so much discrepancy between good, average and non existent sales processes. And for me what most relationship building exercises or selling activities or the building of sales teams comes down to is that about three quarters of what we do is generally systemized. Even teams that allow quite a large amount of personalization in what they do and I am all for letting personality shine through. But even these teams, they still tend to have a very large portion of what they do being relatively repetitive across their customer meetings. Now that doesn't mean they say the same things, but it does mean the process they generally follows is quite similar. And when we talk about sales processes, I think it's quite easy to map out the lead generation, meet and greet presentation, follow up and closing out segments. And then finally your post sale, your five steps, your sales process, I think that's easy to do and strongersalesteams.com sales process is a great spot. You can actually download a way to go about building out your sales process if you need to. It's in the Resources section of our website. However, for me, what often gets missed is actually sitting down and saying, okay, great, so we're in the presentation stage of our sales process. How do we all go about this? So how do we make sure that the very vast majority of us are doing the same thing most of the time? Right. And for me, look, I'll certainly say that when I was leading larger teams through my career, both in corporate and the entrepreneurial world, and certainly leading sales teams now, but when I was leading the largest of my teams, I was guilty and not actually sitting down and saying, you know what, when we have our quotation presentation, what do we actually talk about when we run through? So we're gonna have a little mini series here over the next month where I'm gonna run through a few of these key meetings and I'm gonna start at the meet and greet meeting. So this is that time when we've generated a lead, we've nurtured that lead, and certainly I've spoken about nurturing when it comes to the sales process. Right. And how there's such great opportunity to nurture your customers. And, you know, for those who really want to know more about nurturing and generating leads, we can head Back to episode 86 for my top tips around generating leads, and then episode 87 for my top tips around nurturing and essentially getting that meeting booked. So for this podcast today, what I actually want to run through is what happens when we get that meeting booked, how we make sure that the majority of our team are doing the same thing the majority of the time. So we're going to call this creating value through the meet and greet meeting. And I'm going to break this down into three areas. The pre meeting, the during meeting, and the post meeting. And what I will say is there is a lot more to this than what we're going through today. And certainly being able to pull it together and work out exactly where you have gaps and where you're succeeding is really important. In fact, I certainly wouldn't just be taking this podcast and going to try and roll it out. Right. It needs a workshop behind it, some serious active commitment from your team members, and potentially some help as well. It's something I love doing and have done this exercise many times with teams over the last few years. So for me, let's have a look at pre meeting. So what are we doing prior to meeting our customers that will help with our meet and greet? The number of times I've received feedback that says this isn't that important. I cannot count. However, the number of times that after going through my thoughts on this, where I've had teams actually acknowledge the importance of doing some pre meeting work is really almost as significant. And what I will say is this certainly applies more to customers where we're trying to build relationships versus the cash and carry type of sales, where we're in, we get the deal done and we're out. But for me, when it comes to a pre meeting, all what is super, super important is your research and preparation. So this isn't just going to the company website, looking up how many team members they have, where they're based, what their latest stock exchange or board meeting report says, or if they're a small business, what the three things they offer are. This is actually thinking about the people you're meeting, trying to find common links between yourself and those people, trying to find points of interest that you can work through in the meeting, actually trying to find ways where you can actually build a relationship with these people over and above just knowing their business. And there's a great quote from Warren Buffett that, you know, I always get wrong when I talk about it in detail, but it's quite old. I think it was a number of years ago that he said it because something like moving customers from intellectual loyalty through to emotional loyalty is the name of the game for happy customers. I think he says customer success, right? But for me, this part here where we're doing research and preparation is all about trying to build relationships, go beyond intellectual loyalty and move towards emotional loyalty. So intellectual loyalty is simply knowing your product or knowing the customer's need. Emotional loyalty is actually creating something that customers are going to want to come back to and engage with. Right? You're solving problems or creating opportunities, capitalizing on opportunities well beyond just a technical understanding. So for me, that's where the research and preparation works. And I have a whole approach to this. By all means, get in touch around how we can actually do that research without needing to take on significant amounts of team member time. Too long for today, but can certainly run through it. Second part for me is how we create our first impression. And that's where you might go, say what? Right, first impression, you're not even in the meeting yet. In fact, this may not be our first impression, this may be our second or our third. Because we've engaged with this customer, we've met them, we've generated a lead, whatever it may be. But for me, this is one of the best opportunities to have a customer walk into your meeting, active and willing and really ready to participate. And this is how you can build some value before you get in front of them. Sending a video message, writing them a note around something impactful, asking them questions around what's really valuable to them. Right. Finding a way to build some momentum before you walk into that meeting is a really impactful piece for me around your pre meeting preparation. The next piece here, so we've gone research and preparation, first impressions. The next piece for me is confirming the meeting. I'm going to have to put my hand up and say I'm terrible at this. It's something that I really am actively working on getting better with. But before you have meetings with customers, confirm they're going to be there, confirm the venue, confirm that it's face to face and not video call. I had a customer the other week talk to me about how they actually attended a customer meeting which had face to face written down on that customer meeting. And they got there and the room was set up with all the video software and the customers were all actually at home, all their team members. So they were all dialing into the video link and felt sorry for the customer. Right. Because they'd driven a long way to get there. My customer, sorry, because they'd driven a long way to get there. But confirming those meetings is really, really important and can actually help you build some of that first impression. The other piece for me, pre meeting, so this is before we go into a meeting with a customer, is getting clear around what we think we want out of that meeting. We're going to have plenty of time if we do it well within the meeting to understand what the customer needs. But be ready to talk from your end around where you think you can add value. So yes, that comes down a little bit to the research and preparation that you go about. But even more importantly, it's around making sure that you know what you want out of that meeting because it will allow you to steer that meeting in a direction that does create value. Because if you're not sure what you want, it's going to be really hard to understand how you're going to create value. Right. If you're talking about hypotheticals and potentials and things that aren't necessarily tangible. So pre meeting pieces here around research and preparation. But proper research and preparation, not just your cursory look at the website, creating a first impression, or it might be an impression well beyond that, but making sure you're continuing to build that relationship, confirming the meeting and then last but not least, getting clear on what you want out of that meeting, right? So we're rolling into that meeting. We are on video, we are on the phone, we are face to face. It doesn't matter. For me, the most important thing we need to be doing at the start of that meeting is creating that second impression, right? We can call it building rapport, we can call it whatever you like, right? But it's about spending as much time as you possibly can with your customer, building a relationship. For me, the longer we can spend in this phase of the meeting, 20, 30, 40, you know, 50 minutes, an hour, as long as you can around building that relationship, it means that the next part around we're actually talking around the opportunity or the pain points or the needs analysis. It can be far more impactful because there's been a little bit of bread broken, if you like, between the two parties and they're starting to talk beyond that surface level. For me, I love being able to really try and find those common points of interest. There's some great salespeople I've worked with, they use the lobby while they're waiting to look for, you know, certain signs or ways that they might be able to create a relationship with a customer. The types of cars parked in the car park is one from great salesperson I've worked with. They do research on the person, they try and find common people that they both know, or they're just really, really bloody good at asking questions. When they move into that meeting, that opens up the conversation and has the other party talking. I think for me, when we walk into our meeting, this is by far the most important part to get right early. Okay, so once we've done that, we've built some rapport and naturally we actually need to start talking about the job we're going to do together. For me, it all comes down to needs analysis and that's about finding the pain or the opportunity to capitalise on if we don't do this and if we don't spend time really working through this, what we end up doing is talking about what we think is the right thing to offer. That is, we assume and assumptions can make idiots of us all when we do this the wrong way. So making sure that we are prepared to spend time asking questions and really getting to the bottom around what the customer needs is so important. And I would have to say that on the basis of just Last year, the 300 or so salespeople that I worked with, having the confidence to slow down the meeting until such point in time as you've gotten what you need to Understand the pain or the opportunity present really takes some courage. It's not every salesperson that can do this, and I think for me, even the best at it still work hard on it. They're still slowing themselves down in the meeting. They're pinching their palms, right? They're writing down notes, they've got prompters in there that says, what's the opportunity, opportunity here? And they make sure they get that written down before they move on. Because once you get that, once you understand that you have a captive audience on the other side. From there, it's quite easy to roll into the third step, which is creating the customer goals. So what are they looking to see as a result of your engagement together? Right. What does success look like for them in working with you or with the business you're in or the company you work for? Right. So this often can come down to the set of deliverables, which I'll talk about that in a moment. But for me it's about saying, okay, if we can get to this point, if we can get a return on investment of this, if we can have some type of savings for your business of that, if we can create this type of value for your team or for your customers, then do we have something that's really interesting to you? And in fact, this is where you can go so far as to say, if I can pull together this proposal, will you be ready to work with us? Right. Will you be able to move forward? Will you be able to engage us as your selected partner? And it's just getting really clear on what the end game is, right? That journey that you want to get to, that destination, that once we get clear on that, that for me is the crux of this meet and greet. Create a relationship, understand what customer wants, but get the goals really clear. And the way that I like to express these is around what I call the three Ds. So the Ds are understanding what the deliverables are. So, I. E. What the outcome you need to get to the if I will you. That for me is the most important. The second one here is understanding when we need to get this to this buy such the due date. So we have the deliverables, the due date, which I prefer to call the deadline. So the deliverables, we need to meet the deadline that we need to hit to have this ready to go by and the decision makers, so who's making those decisions? So when it comes to deadline, the reason I really like this is that we can then engage the customer around what we need from them before we leave that meeting, right? So if we can get the deliverable sorted and the deadline right, then we've set a calendar of events, right? Call it a Gantt chart, but we've set a calendar of events around what we need to work around. The third one for decision makers, for me, then allows us to ask the question that says, right, what do I need to do to help you inform those decision makers? Can I meet with them? Can I meet with some of them? Can I put together something that will allow you to pass through to them? I'm not a huge fan of allowing customers to sell for you. Right? And by that I mean I'm not a huge fan of allowing customers to do the internal selling to get people on board. I really like to make sure that I'm meeting the decision makers myself and I'm having an involvement there. But for me, when we get the decision makers clear, we not only know what we have to deliver when we have to deliver it by the deadline, right? But also who the decision makers are so we can at the very least put together our information in a way that's going to resonate with them. And that again is a terrific question. I like to hear people asking, it's okay, well, if your other decision makers, the cfo, what are the types of things that they're going to want to see? What are the types of things that any of the decision makers are going to want to see? And that allows you to walk out from that first meeting knowing what I got to deliver when I got to do it by, and the format I got to put it together in to make sure I'm ticking off all decision makers. For me, I really will encourage to work super, super hard on getting in front of decision makers when we tend to have those two proposals sitting in front of a decision maker. When you don't know someone, they are inherently a higher risk. When you know who they are, that risk profile drops and it becomes easier to choose them. So again, something that for most salespeople, this is some of the basics, but so many forget to do, right? And that's having the courage to ask when your next meeting is. You should know your in house, KPIs around pulling together your proposals or whatever you need to book that next meeting. And even more importantly is give the customer a job. Right? Giving the customer a job. It's something that we explored in this podcast. It wasn't all that long ago. It was back in episode 94 with Matthew Wyatt where he spoke about giving A customer, a job, I love it. It's something I use myself now. It's about making sure that when you leave that meeting, the customer has a job to do. Go and find where the product's gonna sit, go and speak to others within the business. Do something that is gonna keep them engaged in the process and, and gives you something to talk about with that customer. For me, when we get that right, when we have the customer actively working on it, there's less chance they're gonna forget about the project, right? And it builds them up and up and up towards those goals, those deliverables with a deadline and key decision makers that you've set so that you're ready to go. So for me, just to summarise that in the meeting, it's about creating that impression, building the rapport, spending as much time as you can in there, understanding the opportunity or the pain points and not moving on until you have these nailed. Getting the customer goals clear so you know that if you do something it will lead to a result. Having your three Ds under control, which is your deliverables, your deadlines and decision makers. And then last but not least, it is setting up your next meeting. Right? And we do that by giving a customer a job. So as we're going through all these, I will also say effective usage of your CRM is really, really important because it allows you to capture all this data. But for me that's a given these days and if you're not doing that, then you absolutely are behind the eight ball and it's something that you feel free pick up the phone and talk to you about, about how we can just get some basics happening here. Okay, so we've had the pre meeting, we've then gone and met with our customer and now we're into that post meeting phase. So we're actually following up. You know, we're busy bees before we get to our presentation meeting. For me, in a very, very vast majority of businesses I work with, it's present what you're putting together face to face and don't accept not being able to do that. If your customer isn't interested, then having that follow up meeting for me generally probably says they're probably not that interested right. In moving with your service. But I think that's a topic for another time. But for me, once we finish that first meeting, it's all about continuing to create value between your meet and greet and your proposal meeting or your quotation meeting, right? So it's all about finding ways that we can Keep in contact with our customer, checking in with a job that you've given them, keeping them updated on the progress you're making, finding some other area of value that you can really drive into their business because that inherently will continue to keep them engaged, right? It's all about creating value to keep our customers engaged at this point in time. And if we are consistent with our communication and we're meeting the deadlines that we have set as to when we come back together, that for me really nails this post meeting piece, right? And essentially that's all I have to say around this and that's some great proactive follow up. Post your meeting, but consistently communicating with your customer. When we get that right, we'll have a customer that is more engaged when we go back to meet them again. Okay, so that's the meet and greet and I hope you've taken some value out of this. I'm going to summarise it now because for me actually stepping out some of these basics is so important not only in finding gaps, right? Gaps in where your team's not delivering, but also making sure everyone's on the same page. So we have three areas here. We have the pre meeting, during the meeting and the post meeting. So for that pre meeting piece, it's all about doing your research really properly doing your research on your customer to make sure you can walk in and find some value. Creating a great first impression by engaging with them, pre meeting, confirming your meeting and getting your business goals set. When it comes to during the meeting. This is all about spending as much time as you can on building rapport, as much time as you can on building rapport, finding out the pain or the opportunity and not moving on until you're really clear on what those are. Then moving into defining what the customer goals are, if I will you type of approach, right? And yes, we can call that soft closing, but certainly from there structuring this around the three Ds, deliverables, deadlines and decision makers. They're the really key pieces to make sure we're on top of what we need to do. And last but not least, setting your next meeting and giving the customer a job, giving them some homework to keep them engaged in the process from there, the last piece, right, we've had our meeting, the post meeting, this is all about keeping in contact with our customer, proactive follow up and consistently communicating. We want to make sure that when we do get to that proposal presentation, our customer is really excited and ready to go. So that's it from today we're going to have a break. We have a great guest on next week, then after that we're going to jump that we have two weeks in a row of guests and then we're going to jump back into how we talk about the quotation phase of our sales process and we'll go through some best practice ideas there and it won't be everything. But I'm really looking forward to that. And and please, if you need to refer to the notes, do so because there's lots of good chunky outcomes out of this that can really help with your team. Okay, that's it from us today. Please keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Bye for now.

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