Ryan Dohrn advises starting with 10-15 minute meetings instead of 30, using that time to share a quick win and read the prospect's interest. If they're not engaged early, wrap up. Cut the company history slides; decision-makers don't have an hour anymore.
Questions this video answers
Request a 10‑15 minute meeting, use the first 10‑15 minutes to get to know the prospect, share brief success stories, and gauge interest. If you get buy‑in, you can extend the meeting; if not, wrap up. Keep slide decks minimal and avoid unnecessary company history.
Chapters
Hey friends and fans, how's it going out there this week in sales land? Hope you're closing some deals and doing really great. I'm answering your listener questions today sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com, and I love listener questions, so be sure to send them my way. If I don't reply to you, I have gone to heaven. I always reply to every email that's sent, I promise. All right, next question comes from Tracy in Chicago, and Chicago, kind of my adopted hometown. Tracy's question Hey Ryan, you talk about 15, 20, or 30-minute meetings. I have way too much to share and sell. There's no way that I could do it in 30 minutes. Any help is appreciated. So Tracy, what I'm suggesting to you and to others is when you prospect, you prospect and ask for a 10, 15, 20-minute meeting. Now, if that meeting goes beyond the 15 minutes, beyond the 20 minutes, beyond the 30 minutes, that's because you've gotten some buy-in at that meeting. That the customer wants you to go on. So I believe, and I know some of you agree with me, we've talked about it on the podcast and things like that. Friends, you're going to know within 10 or 15 minutes if this is set up to be a good meeting, if you set yourself up to have a good meeting, or if the client is being responsive to what it is that you're throwing down. After that 10 or 15 minutes, you have to make a judgment call if it makes sense to continue on. And a lot of times, in a lot of circumstances, it just doesn't make sense. If you can't get them excited in the first 10, 15 minutes, 15, 20 minutes, you're probably not going to get excited in the next 30, 45, or 60 minutes. Just kind of think about that. So Tracy, I'm not trying to cram 60 minutes worth of stuff into a 10, 15, 20, 30-minute meeting. I'm using that brief time to get to know the person a little bit, figure out who they are, share some success stories, then gauge their interest to go on further beyond that. So Tracy from Chicago, hope that answers your question and gives you a little confidence that you can take those 10-minute calls and turn them into 45-minute meetings. Now, everybody just understand, 60-minute meetings, they're a little bit a thing of the past. Most people don't have 60 minutes to give to a sales team or a salesperson. So just consider that. Take your slide decks, minimize them a little bit, throw out your company history— nobody cares about that— and get rid of anything that really is ancillary kind of fluff or really truly doesn't matter. All right, friends, keep your listener questions coming in, ryan@ryandohrn.com. Don't forget, head over to Amazon, pick up my new book, Selling Forward. All proceeds go to charity, and we'll see you next week. Just don't forget that if this job was easy, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. All right, ryandohrn.com. Send me an email, and I'll be sure to answer your listener questions next week. Take care.
