Fuentes Friday: #0025

What I’m Hearing From Sales Leaders/Professionals

This past week has been exciting as multiple clients reached out to say that summer is over, and prospects are engaging with a renewed sense of energy. Many of them shared that meetings that they have been trying to book all summer are now on the calendar (a large number for post-Labor Day, but…).

With all of them, I asked the same questions:

1. What is the prospect’s purpose for the meeting?

2. What is the prospect’s expected outcome?

3. What is your purpose for the meeting?

4. What is your expected outcome?

5. What are the three key questions you need answered on the call?

The majority of the answers to questions 1 and 2 started with “I think.” A few of my clients had good answers for 3 and 4, but the one I heard most often was “get back on track,” with track being nebulously defined when we went four to five layers deep.

As for the last question, all of them struggled to come up with the key questions (some had fewer, many had way more).

The key in this scenario is understanding the first question: what is their purpose for agreeing to the meeting?

If you can get the prospect on the phone for five minutes and have a conversation, that is ideal. If you cannot, I would suggest sending an email that asks, “I am preparing our agenda. What are the most important things on your end that we need to cover in our upcoming meeting?”

Waiting until the meeting to ask this question puts you on your back foot.

The second question can be asked ahead of the meeting, or it can be asked during the framed intro. When I ask it during the framed intro, I like to follow up with, “Thanks/that’s great/ok/etc. My expected outcome for today is X.”

Obviously, if you have done the prep work for questions 3, 4, and 5, saying the above is much easier.

The biggest risk in these scenarios is that there is gross misalignment between where the prospect is [has not thought of you a single time while away at camp] and where you are [with a desk drawer full of letters that you never had the courage to send].

The purpose of this meeting must be to eliminate that risk and get on the same page. If you list any other purpose ahead of that one for this type of meeting, you are looking at it all wrong.

To answer the final question: “What are the three key questions you must answer?” my suggestion is to question tree your framed intro question about their expected outcomes. Doing so will help guide your thinking about what is the most important information to gather.

Good luck, we are back in selling season (only 119 days until December 20th)!

[Author’s Note: having these conversations about three weeks ago would have been helpful to me as I had a big whiff recently.]

What Made Me Laugh

In Spanish, “yo se” means “I know.” My mother used to call my brother Jose, “Yose” because he would always say that to her. This tweet reminded me of that. It will probably remind you of your own children or childhood.

This Week’s 40/20

For every 40 hours of work, I believe you should spend 20 (additional) hours mastering your craft. This is how I spent some of my 20 hours this week.

I am loud, but I was happy to learn this week that it’s not due to the fact that I have the hearing of a 90-year-old. In fact, my hearing age is 37. What’s yours? Want to find out? Take the test HEAR . (See what I did there?)

Potpourri for 800

Potpourri (shoutout to Jeopardy!) is a category that covers a variety of topics.

This thread immediately got my attention with the picture of the beetle, but it was the live ant bridge (second tweet) that made me have to share it. Also, the video of humans wearing animal costumes and then removing said costume in front of the animal is funny, but I am sure traumatizing. It also reminds me of the time my sister and I were arguing in front of Jose (two at the time), and I ripped off the head of a life-sized doll in front of him. #Bigbrothertrauma!

Quote for My Son

Every day, I leave my son a note with a quote. This was my favorite from this past week:

“Well done is better than well said.” – Benjamin Franklin