The Seven Minute Appointment

When a salesperson contacts me and asks for an appointment, I always assume that I'll need to set aside at least 30 minutes and the truth is, I really don't have random, unassigned 30 minute blocks of time to meet someone who wants to sell me their services. You'll note that I didn't say I absolutely don't need their services. What I don't need is to lose valuable time when I could be making more money for my business.

A few years ago, it occurred to me that if I did my homework and research in advance, I could accomplish what I needed to accomplish and ask the questions I needed to ask in seven minutes or less. It also required some preparation on the part of my prospects but they could do that whenever they wanted prior to the meeting. I starting asking for seven-minute appointments and hey presto - like magic - it worked. I recommended it to other salespeople and it worked for them, too. Why did it work? For starters, it took the guesswork out of how long the prospect needed to set aside for the meeting. Seven minutes is a smoke break; a coffee break; a bathroom break or a quick trip to the vending machine. I asked for seven minutes and even laid down my iPhone on the prospect's desk with the timer set for seven minutes. When the time was up, I called it but, if I had done what I'd set out to do, the prospect invariably invited me to stay longer because I had their attention.

Another reason I think it works is because seven is a crooked number. It's not "about ten minutes" as in "just give me ten minutes and I think you'll find it worth your time." It's seven minutes. It's an exact number and it shows the prospect that I respect their time and have my stuff together. It also shows them that I am confident enough to believe I could gain their attention and interest in seven minutes so what did they have to lose?

In order to make this successful for yourselves, you need to be well-prepared. You need to do your homework and research. You need to be sure you are reaching out to the decision maker and you need to have some compelling open-ended questions. If possible, you need to have the prospect do a little work and have something ready for the meeting. For example, since I've spent my whole working life in freight forwarding, let's use a freight forwarding example. Let's make transit time and inventory carrying costs the critical element of our sales call.

All services are not created equal and, oftentimes, the service an importer signed up for is not what they're getting. They may have been told that the transit time for an ocean shipment from Shanghai to Chicago is 22 days but is that what they're really getting? This is where you want the prospect to do a little work in advance of your seven-minute meeting so you ask them to have documentation for their last few shipments ready for review at your appointment. You can tell them to delete any numbers relating to what they paid. You just want to review the transit times.

When you show up for your meeting, you thank them for giving you the appointment; ask if they have the documents available; set your timer for seven minutes and go. Confirm that the transit time they were sold was 22 days and then look at the invoice date. Let's say it's 1 November However, the date on the bill of lading is 4 November and the on-board (sailed) bill of lading date is 7 November. Ask the prospect if they know why there's a gap of 6 days from the invoice date and the confirmed on-board sailing date? They will likely guess that the shipment was waiting for the next vessel. The shipment should have arrived in Los Angeles on 21 November and then Chicago on 29 November. The delivery order shows that it was delivered on 2 December so you ask your prospect if they know why there was a gap of 3 days from when it arrived in Chicago and when it was delivered. Again, they'll likely guess that it was something like that it needed to be cleared through Customs even though it could likely have been pre-cleared. Now you have a 6-day gap at origin and a 3-day gap at destination for a total of 9 days where it's not clear why. You also note that the overall transit time from date of the shipper's invoice to delivery is 31 days and not the 22 they might have thought they were getting.

This is where you ask the prospect if they know their daily inventory carrying costs. Chances are that they don't but they'd have to agree that there is a cost that needs to be looked into. At this stage, I'd ask the prospect if they saw benefit in having their goods available 9 days sooner and the benefits of being able to ship to their customers 9 days quicker and, as a result, get paid 9 days sooner. The obvious answer is "yes" and this is where I'd call time to honor my initial seven-minute appointment request. Chances are that the prospect will ask you to stay longer to talk more about the transit times you can offer and daily inventory carrying costs. Naturally you would take them up on that offer since you now have them completely engaged.

So, there's the seven-minute appointment. Give it a try and let me know if it leads to more meetings and closings for you. If done correctly, with forethought and planning, I'm sure it will.