Are Face-to-Face Sales Meetings Dead?

What is going on, sales friends? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. And today we're focusing in on face-to-face meetings and what you need to do to actually get those face-to-face meetings. Now, is Zoom a suitable replacement for face-to-face? I would say in a lot of circumstances, it's possible that it is. But why are people not granting us as many face-to-face meetings? And I believe I have identified the reason why. They don't find value in meeting with us. It's not they don't like us. It's not that they maybe don't want to go grab a coffee or a cocktail with us, but they're not finding that there's enough value to the conversation that makes them want to dedicate time to that conversation. I found that being a nice guy just really isn't enough, because I've always been a pretty nice guy. I'm sure you are a nice person as well. Value is what it's all about. So, when I'm going to try to get a meeting with somebody face-to-face, I need to come to them with strategic information. I need to come to them with, like, a competitive analysis. I need to come to them with case studies. I need to figure out what I can bring to that gathering that's dripping in value. If you follow me a long time, you've downloaded the app, watched the YouTube channel, podcast, whatever it is. If you've been a part of all that, you know that I try to drip in value. All right, and drip—that means different things, different people, right? I try to drip in value, and what I mean by that is I want every engagement with me. To be valuable. Now you might say, well, my customer service skills are value-driven. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about will someone get a benefit from actually meeting with you? Now some of you that sell marketing solutions like me, you're like, yeah, if you'll meet with me, I can create a better marketing program for you. Well, that is beneficial. There's value to that, but they're gonna buy that from you. And so it's valuable to you to meet with them so that you can give them better options. I can see long-term value, long-tail value, but friends, they need immediate value. Value that's in the now. What can you do to create so much value that they're like, wow, heck yes, I need to meet with Ryan. See, a lot of times I believe that my clients take my calls not only because they like me, but because they find value in the relationship. They find value in the conversations. One of the things that I'm a machine about is referrals. I refer more business than probably anybody else in my industry, and that's the reason that I have such good success, I believe. I recently had a client say to me, I'm never gonna cancel with you because I never want your referrals to end. See, that's valuable, and that's really what it is all about. If you're looking to book more face-to-face meetings, figure out what you can do to make those meetings extremely valuable to them, not just to you as a seller. Get out there and sell something, make us all proud. Never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. Friends, this is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. All right, we'll see you next time.