Your Prospect Only Gives You 10 Minutes

Jennifer, this will never work. My prospects only give me 10 minutes at my discovery sales meetings.

My clients try to stump me with this feedback over and over again at our weekly coaching sessions.

But it is okay, because I have a few sales strategies I will share on how to overcome the

¨I only have 10 minutes to talk to you,¨ prospect entitled and snooty welcome into their office.  

You have 3 choices:

A. Ask the prospect to reschedule

B. Squeeze the pitch into 10 minutes

C. Conduct the first 10 minutes of your plan

Let′s examine at each choice:

Choice A: “Ask the prospect to reschedule” can potentially lead to having no meeting at all. In most cases, scheduling the first sales meeting already took a lot of time and effort. If you are both already in the same physical space, I would take the plunge and run the meeting. Choice A is not the right answer.

Choice B “Squeeze the pitch into10 minutes” is not the correct answer either.

First of all, the word pitch should have instantly raised an eyebrow. Pitch needs to be removed from a sales professional′s vocabulary today. 

“Pitch” gives the impression that the salesperson will throw his or her services at the buyer without consideration for the specific buyer present or what that buyer wants.

An old school product dump will most likely trigger the “flight response”. The flight response looks like this coming from a potential customer:

Thanks so much. Send me a proposal.

I will talk to my boss and get back to you.

If you hear either of these, you have dug yourself in a hole. This is not an easy hole to dig yourself out of.

The reason why many might think that Choice B is the correct answer is because most sales professionals get uncomfortable when there is a short time constraint imposed on them.

Don’t forgot the sales process is about your potential customers and about their company′s situation.

Trying to squeeze all your service′s features and benefits into 10 minutes will leave no time for them to talk about their most important issues.

This brings us to Choice C.

Choice C: ¨Conduct the first 10 minutes of your plan” is the correct answer.

You first have to ask yourself: what is my plan?

Do you have a plan? What is the sales process that you follow during your sales meeting?

If you have a plan, what happens in the first 10 minutes?

Here is an example of a buyer-centric sales meeting plan:

Step 1: Research your prospect ahead of time

Step 2: At meeting, build a warm environment and rapport

Step 3: Ask questions about the prospect′s pains and goals

Step 4: Match your prospect’s needs with your service

Step 5: Ask for the next step

Setting aside Step 1, which takes place ahead of time, in the first 10 minutes, you can easily focus on the most important part of the sales meeting: the customer!

That may scare you at first because you might feel that you are failing your obligation to talk about your service.

This being said, let′s take a moment to focus on the buyer. 

In which scenario do you think that the buyer will feel more comfortable and feel more positive towards you?

10 minutes of listening to you?

or

10 minutes of talking about themselves?

I think that the answer is obvious!

After 9 minutes of questioning and discovering, watch what can happen.

I respect your time. It has been 10 minutes, and I know that is all the time we have today. I learned so much on how we can work together. Can we continue a bit, or would you rather schedule another meeting so we can over how my company can help you with x and y needs?

Your prospect’s face will light up.

You will then be able to take all the information that you learned and make a customized presentation of your service to this buyer′s situation.

Your chances of winning this client have increased ten-fold in 10 minutes.

Updated from: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-sell-when-you-only-have-20-minutes-jennifer-baxavanis/

About the Author:

Jennifer has over 10 years of experience helping B2B businesses increase their conversion rates globally. She focuses on building and implementing the right sales processes for her client′s organizations to succeed in winning business with their target customer groups.

She works with a Management Consultancy, Freshstone Consulting and also publishes a sales blog on her personal brand, www.jenniferbaxavanis.com.