Ideas For Making Your Customer Meetings Engaging For Everyone

We've all sat through those customer meetings that drone on and on yet never seem to get anywhere. Or the uncomfortable meeting where it's obvious that the prospect or customer isn't connected - either because they're bored or because they're frustrated with a mismatch between their expectations and the content being covered.

There are any number of reasons that customer meetings miss the mark and in reality it's not possible to control for every potential scenario. Of course you've got to plan and prepare for as many scenarios as possible in order to minimize the risk of a flame out, but some level of risk will always remain.

This piece isn't about making every meeting perfect because that would be impossible. This piece is about making every meeting engaging and the steps you can take to put yourself in the best position to achieve your desired outcome.

• Confirm your plan for the meeting with the customer a few days in advance of the actual meeting. This will enable you to validate that your planned flow and content are in alignment with their expectations. And if not, you will still have time to course correct. Making sure that what you're prepared to discuss is the same thing that the customer wants to discuss is critical yet relatively easy to accomplish. The customer will thank you for taking this extra step which ends up protecting their time.
• Write down your pre-call plan and review it with anyone else scheduled to attend the meeting with you as well as your manager (if they're not planning to attend.) For a pre-call plan to be effective it needs to contain a few key data points: 

     1) What is the purpose of the meeting?

     2) What specific objective are we seeking to accomplish?

     3) Who will be attending from the customer? What are their relevant interests? What are their pain triggers?

     4) What are the likely objections that will be raised? How will we respond?

     5) What are the two or three most important questions you plan to ask?

• Get onsite early so that you can be settled in prior to the meeting start time. This will signal strongly that you value time and that you are likely the kind of person who can follow through on commitments. Your punctuality on the front end of a meeting will also enable you to end the meeting punctually as well...if not early. There is no reason ever to keep a meeting going after the objectives have been met just because there is time left on the schedule. An early end to a well run meeting will be appreciated by everybody 100% of the time.
• Break through the fourth wall. This goes back to the early days of theatrical performances and occurs when an actor does something to draw attention to the fact that this is a play and that we're all participating - cast and audience alike. An example of breaking through the fourth wall is when an actor engages the audience directly. In terms of a sales call, this means snap out of the "salesperson" role and show up as a human. Engage in a conversation and foster dialogue -- resist the urge to default to the buttoned up sales rep who needs to get through the presentation no matter what. Have some fun. Use props. Practice self recrimination to help break the ice and keep it broken.
• Read the room and validate customer connection, I.E. is the customer 'with you.' If people are getting antsy it's because they're either bored, confused or think they've 'got it' and they're ready to move on. Either move to their next meeting and forget about you because you're not relevant, or move on because they don't understand your point and they don't want to burn more calories trying to figure it out. Make hard stops to validate if the conversation is on track relative to their expectations. Be sure to get back with answers to the early questions that sometimes are left to be handled at the end. Admit that you could talk about this stuff all day but that you're also sensitive to the fact that pretty much everyone else wants to move through the discussion as efficiently as possible.
• When the meeting objectives have been hit, end the meeting. There is no reason to drag a meeting on beyond the point of usefulness just because it's scheduled for a certain amount of time. You should always shoot to end meetings early. Not at the expense of quality, of course, but in the spirit of efficiency and respect for time.
• Follow up quickly - same day is best, within 24 hours is absolutely mandatory. If you follow up quickly you will bookmark the on-time start and establish yourself as a professional who can be counted on...and who is signaling a strong interest in the prospect or customer's world and wellbeing. You want to be establish a reputation as someone who delivers. Not a pushover but actually quite the opposite. By setting yourself up as a professional you are earning the right to push back on the customer when they have ideas that will impede them from getting the best outcomes. Or to hold the line on pricing because it is a fair deal when you look at it in terms of higher order business objectives. Your rapid follow up will likely end up making you more money in commissions.

There is no magic formula to any of this. It's all practical and you have the capability to execute these steps. You have the ability to do all of these things and more so do them. Don't be responsible for any more yawner meetings where people spend more time scrolling through their Instagram feed than engaged in a discussion with you. It's your responsibility, take it!

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Matt Weick is an experienced sales professional, novice runner and hack guitar player who is smart enough to know there is still plenty left to learn. Matt started a disk jockey business at 13, accidentally caught a gas station on fire at 16 and sold books door-to-door during college before finally settling into technology sales which continues to be his passion.

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