Five Tips to a Great First Meeting with a Potential Customer

Here are five ways to be distinct from other sales people:

1. Be the Expert

• To be credible, you must be an expert in your field.
• Do not overwhelm your potential customer with jargon and technical terms
• Demonstrate your skill as an expert by being able to relate your client’s situation
• How their “itch” might be solved through your solution in ways they can understand.
• Create a mutual understanding of the problems your customers are facing and that you might be able to help them.
• Again, do not cloud their understanding by using meaningless technical terms

2. Do your research

• Before your first sales meeting, do a few web searches so you can learn about your potential customer.
• Learn as much as you can about their organization
• Research news on the web that relates to their market
• Being able to get a good sense of your potential customer’s background will help you come up with interesting perspectives you can share with them.

3. Be Curious

• One of the most critical sales skill is Curiosity.
• When are curious about people, business and situations, you can’t help but ask a lot of questions
• Potential customers love being asked a lot of questions. This is because:They will do most of the talking and people enjoy talking about themselves.
• They will feel great about the sales meeting
• If you listen with intent and have 101% presence in the meeting, your customer will feel listened to and appreciated – customers love that!
• You will understand your customer’s outlook that will become critical information to help you solve their “itch” in the best way possible.

4. Ask all the right questions – Before and During the Meeting

• Ask yourself these questions before your first sales meeting:Why is this client taking the time to meet you?
• What are your client’s strategic goals, opportunities and threats?
• How will you show your customer what you do rather than talking about how great you are?
• How will you differentiate your organization from the competition?

What are possible objections your customer could have? How will you handle them?

• Structure your questions to be high level to ensure the customer know the answer to them.
• Your first question should take you in the right direction.
• Here are some examples of questions that can help you accomplish bullet points 2 and 3:What are the top three things you want to achieve right now?
• Why are these three things important to you and what changes would you like take place?
• How are you making those changes possible to achieve?
• As you work towards those changes, what is working and what is not working?

5. Is there value in moving forward?

• Ask if they see value in continuing the discussion – 2nd meeting to close the deal
• Be sure to be polite and not pressure your potential customer

The first sales meeting is not over until you follow up. These are usually an email with the following components:

1.   Summary of the customer’s goals and requirements

2.   Description of your solution and its strengths and benefits

3.   Next steps – as agreed at the end of the first meeting.

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