How To Raise The Bar In Your Customer Meetings

Hey, it's Jermaine Edwards, your customer growth guide. In this video, we're going to talk about how you can raise the bar on every single customer meeting you have. Hey, and we're talking about customer meetings. Now, why are we talking about customer meetings? Why? Because every single one of you that's watching this video right now I'm imagining, just out of curiosity, that you might be meeting with customers either in person, over the phone, virtually, and whatever kind of channel is appropriate for your conversations. And if that's the case, then you probably want to change and transform the way in which your customer experiences you as a person, as an advisor to them in the services and products that you sell and serve them with. So how do we reshape the relationships that we have? How do we reinforce the qualities of the relationships that we have? Or how do we reignite something that may have been lost? That's what I'm talking about. If we can think about how in each of our engagements with customers, particularly in meetings, we can do that, just imagine the kind of impact you'll have and the kind of relationship you can have with those customers as well. So we're going to talk about 3 really important areas in every kind of meeting engagement. That's perhaps unconsciously or consciously aware to you right now that you can improve to raise the bar in every meeting. The first we're going to talk about is pre-meeting. Now, in the pre-meeting, it's oftentimes we think about it as setting the agenda, but actually it's more than setting the agenda. In that particular opportunity of preparing, of thinking about who the customer is, who's going to be in the room, What do we want to talk about? What is the goal of the customer? What are they after from us directly? What are they looking to seek for as a desire, as an outcome for themselves? Once we begin to really take in that data and prepare for how we engage, we can up the game by asking a few more questions. And in that pre-meeting area of preparation, we may want to ask ourselves, a couple of questions like this. The first is, what is it that we don't know about our customer right now that if we did would add significant value to how we serve them? The second, what is it that we do know about our customer today that if we brought into the room with us would add significant value to them because they don't have this information? Now just imagine you applied that to your pre-meeting preparation. Questions that helped you to explore the things that you don't know, and bringing in value based on the things you do know about the customer that they might not know about themselves. Just imagine bringing that value and insight so they now feel that you know them better than they do, and you can add significant value to them as well by the insight you share. That's the power of really thinking about the pre-meeting engagement. So just imagine that all of your preparation plus those 2 questions equals impact for you immediately in that first meeting. Great. So now we've talked about the pre-meeting. You've prepared those questions. You've thought about the value you could bring to the customer based on what you know about them today, and you've perhaps prepared some questions that you know would be really insightful for the conversation to really engage it in a different kind of level. So I'm assuming that's what you've done. Now you're in the meeting. What now? So let me offer something to help you focus and perhaps think about this slightly differently. This may be counterintuitive to what most people would say, but the meeting isn't about you at all. It's actually about the customer. It's about the value payoff for them. The time they're investing in you versus the actual result they get at the end that's relevant to them. So it's time and the investment times result equals either a value payoff or something negative. It's either a valuable experience or a non-valuable experience, and you want to increase the value as much as possible. And it's not about the information that you share, it's about how relevant it is to the customer, either solving a problem or getting better in a particular area of their business. So in the meeting, we want to think about a few things to evaluate just how successful we are in those meetings. The first thing we may need to think about at the end of that meeting, and this might be a question you could actually ask your customer, is did the customer get what they wanted at the end of the meeting? In terms of results, clarity, or advantage. So a result, clarity on something specific, or an advantage. Did they give— did you give them something that they didn't expect? A new advantage, a new insight that they could use that they go, wow, we, we never thought this was going to be part of this meeting. We're expecting this result, but it actually now has exceeded our expectations. We Got the result, we got some clarity in some stuff, and we got an advantage. You could ask the question to your customer, "Hey, did you get the results that you expected from this meeting? Were you clearer now on how we do business together and how we serve you? Did you feel you got an extra advantage from the insights that we shared?" Just imagine asking those questions and getting a yes from your customers. Not only in asking the questions, Is that valuable to the customer? Because now they're thinking about you differently. But for you, you can document that and now begin to track how many times you, with that customer, have exceeded their expectations. You could even create a case study from this in regards to the results you bring into the customer, as long as you're clear on the specific thing that they've actually wanted, the specific result they actually got from you. You can make that into something quite rich and powerful. So just remember, the meeting isn't about you, it's about the customer. And if they would pay you— just imagine this— if they would pay you to actually have the meeting, that's the kind of meeting you want to have. If a customer would pay you to have that meeting again, you know you're paying them off with huge amounts of value. So now we're in the post-meeting area. We've done all the pre-meeting work and preparation. We're in meeting, we've engaged the customer, we've given them clear results, we've given them clarity, we've given them an advantage through the work and conversations that we've done with them. Now we want to think about that post-meeting. What are we going to do to follow up with this customer to ensure we are moving things in a very fluid and very positive manner. Now, here's what happens, guys. In the follow-up, we can often fall flat. Why? Because we believe that the follow-up is simply just a regurgitating of things that we heard in the meeting, or at worst, it's simply just a checklist of things that we believe just because our customer has perhaps agreed in the meeting that they don't want to experience the same kind of experience they had when in the meeting in the follow-up. But in fact, if you've raised the standard of what it is that you engage the customer with, they expect the same standards to be translated into all parts of your communication. So this is a warning to you that the moment you raise the standard, that now becomes the standard, and you can't go any, any below that. At all. So in this post-meeting, we want to do 3 things for really effective follow-up. The first thing is we want to make sure that we track the engagement in our own calendar. Put it in. Make sure that the time in which you send that email, you have it locked in to when you'll be back in touch with that customer within a few days, 48 hours, to ensure if they haven't responded appropriately, you can follow up with intention to make sure you hold them accountable. The second is in your email, make sure that you are re-articulating exact results, exact challenges, and exact solutions to what you actually discussed. So they know clearly you've understood exactly what you want to do with them to help them achieve the things that they're looking to achieve. Make sure that's written out clearly in that way. The third thing is make sure they know what they are supposed to do. Make it clear, give it a timeline, and tell them when you are going to call back in order to make sure you are held accountable and that you can move things forward to achieve those things that they most want. If you can do those things, make sure it's in your calendar, rearticulate it back to the customer in a way that they would resonate with, and make sure you hold them and yourself accountable in the email So when you follow up, it's really clear and there's no hesitation, no misconstrued communication that you are going to do this together with your customer. That's the power of intentional post-meeting activity. Now I've got a resource for you in a PDF form for you to go through each of these sequences with ideas and scripts and example questions so you can begin to act on this immediately, all for free. So I have— I know you're gonna have no excuses, no excuses at all to go ahead and do this. So subscribe, like, make sure you share this with other people who are looking to raise the bar on their meetings, and I'll see you in the next video.