Are you screwing up your first sales meetings?

There are two types of ‘intro’ sales meeting.

The first is one requested by the prospect. She has a need, does some research and reaches out (hopefully only to you but probably to a few of your competitors as well).

The second is one initiated by you, the agency.? For example, you meet your dream client at an event, send an email shortly after and he agrees to a follow-up conversation.

Typically, when a prospect reaches out to you, she has already decided something needs to change; she isn’t getting the desired results doing things in-house. Or her current agency isn’t up to scratch. As such, she is a member of the ‘5% gang’ – a small collective of B2B buyers who are ‘in the market’ at any one time.

Now, this doesn’t guarantee she will actually follow through and move to another agency, for example. And it certainly doesn’t mean she has correctly diagnosed the problem she faces or how to fix it. But there’s enough of an itch for her to at least explore doing something about it.

When you initiate the meeting, on the other hand, the prospect is typically in a different place.?He’s interested enough to hear what you have to say, otherwise, he wouldn’t have agreed to meet you. But, in his mind, there isn’t a problem requiring immediate attention. He’s in the ‘95% crew’ – a far larger group of B2B buyers who are not actively in the market.

Put another way, the first prospect is already at the start line.

The second is not - he's five steps behind it.

Enough with the analogies, so what?

Because these prospects are at very different stages of the buying journey, your first meeting with each of them needs to be approached very differently.

For example, a qualifying-style conversation might be appropriate in the first scenario. The prospect has a need and has shown some interest in working with your agency. The early exchanges are primarily about establishing if there is a good fit (‘fit’ is broad enough to cover a whole range of criteria, from the suitability of the brief to whether there is cultural alignment).

However, jumping into a qualifying-style conversation is definitely not appropriate in the second scenario. The prospect doesn’t have a live requirement. He hasn’t expressed a particular interest in working with your agency. In fact, before you bumped into each other at the event, he’d never heard of your agency.

So perhaps you should start the meeting by presenting your creds. After all, if he’s not familiar with your people, clients, case studies and, of course, awards, this is the best way to get him up to speed – and closer to that start line - right?

I don’t think so.

Why not, prospects love our creds presentations!

Do they?

Ask yourself this question: how often does a creds meeting result in a second meeting, where you actually start getting into the meat of how you’re going to work together?

I’m guessing not nearly as often as you’d like. Our friend from the ‘95% crew’ is more likely to thank you for your time and say he’ll be in touch when something comes up. But he never does, despite your repeated chase emails.

This is, in part, because most creds decks just regurgitate information on your website. Or they include stuff the prospect just doesn’t care about (not at this early stage, anyway). For example, I’m sure your ‘unique methodology’ is fantastic. But, for an out-of-market prospect, I doubt it’s going to do much to challenge the status quo and therefore provide a compelling case for change.

I’d actually go further by saying in most instances, a creds presentation is a complete waste of time. Primarily, this is because it delivers no value for the prospect. And, from your perspective, it therefore fails to separate you, and your agency, from all the others attempting to ‘sell’ in this way.

OK, so what’s the alternative?

Particularly for those in the ‘95% crew’, you need to build a case for change.

That’s highly unlikely to happen if you only spend time talking about how brilliant your agency is (don’t fret, there’ll be time for that later).

Instead, you need to be genuinely insightful, teaching a prospect something new about themselves, their business or market. Just like you and I, he is bombarded with vast amounts of information, much of it contradictory. His world is also in constant flux.

You therefore create value during these early interactions by demonstrating you understand the problems he is facing. But, more importantly, you are able to shine a light on their root cause(s). After all, the REAL problem always exists below the surface.

Another way you might create value is by helping him to see into the future; to make sense of emerging trends and how they will affect the business, for example.

If you’ve ever wondered why a prospect goes dark after a first meeting – whether you get your creds out or not - it’s because you didn’t share anything genuinely insightful. No insight normally equates to no value. And if there’s no value, there’s no reason to continue talking to you.

‘I am consultative, honest guv’

This is where agencies need to up their sales game.

People like to call themselves ‘consultative’ but, in reality, I’m not sure they are.

Consultative selling involves being a trusted adviser; sharing insight, challenging assumptions and offering advice.

As I alluded to earlier, it relies on you already having a good idea of the problems faced by your prospect because you have seen them many times before. In The Challenger Sale, they call this ‘hypothesis-based selling’.

So, rather than whipping out the creds and talking about your agency for an hour, you instead use insight to build a case for change. Remember, change can be hard, scary and uncomfortable. It is much easier to do nothing, hence in sales, your biggest competitor is usually the status quo.

This is why – when fortunate enough to get that first meeting - you’re wasting it if your case for change is built on the shaky argument your agency is more ‘passionate’, ‘results-focused’ or ‘creative’ than your competitors.

‘If we could just get in the room with more prospects…

…we’d win more clients.’

I’ve heard this so many times.

And it’s a fallacy, I’m afraid.

Those who say this are blind to the fact they’ve only ever converted prospects from the ‘5% gang’ (who, to make things even easier, have likely come via a referral). That’s a relatively straightforward opportunity to win. But put them in a room with a member of the ‘95% crew’ and they haven’t a clue how to build a case for change. So out the come the creds instead.

It’s also why lead generation agencies often get a bad rap – ‘well, they got us some meetings, but the prospects weren’t qualified’ is the common feedback. Translated, this means the prospects weren’t in the market. And the agency wasted the meeting by not having the insight, skills or patience to change that.

Let’s wrap this up

Most agencies have a pipeline problem; there are just not enough live, qualified opportunities at any one time to meet their new business objectives.

I’m convinced this is because agencies either wait for a tiny pool of prospects to be ‘in the market’, by which point they have probably already decided who they want to work with AND / OR agencies do not possess the skills to bring about change when a prospect is not really looking.

The underlying reasons for this? A combination of poor positioning, a lack of genuine thought leadership and a dated approach to selling.

So to finish, a few questions to ponder that might help you start to fix these issues:

• Have you defined a discrete audience for your agency offering? And got this down on paper in the form of an ‘ideal client profile’?
• What are the most common problems faced by this audience? For each of these, what do you believe to be the underlying issues or causes (that your clients and prospects are normally blind to)?
• What are the current or emerging trends impacting your audience? What is your opinion on these? Are they threats or opportunities? To what extent, is your audience up to speed on these trends (clue: not very)

Insight can come in many shapes and sizes. But if you only start by working through the second and third questions above, you’ll already have some pretty juicy stuff up your sleeve.

And, as a result, you’ll deliver a lot more value in your next sales meeting, especially when chatting to our mate in the ‘95% crew’.

Afterwards, he may even want to join your crew.

Now wouldn’t that be something?

And not a creds deck in sight.