How to have better meetings with prospects #1

Okay, you’ve made the appointment, you’ve qualified the lead, and you’re ready to turn a prospect into a client. Now the real business begins: how should you approach the meeting, how should you construct the meeting and how should you close!

In today’s blog, we deal with ‘Approaching the Meeting’.

Start with the End in Mind

Before you start your meeting, jot down on a notepad three key statements that you wish to hear from your prospect. It is better to do this an hour or more prior to the meeting and again 10-15 minutes before the meeting commences.

Please don’t live in fantasy land: only write down what you truly believe you can lead the prospect to say, for example, you might hope that the prospect will state ‘yes please I want to hire you, when can you start’, but is this realistic? Of course not!

You can, however, realistically expect three outcomes that the prospect can be led to:

Statement A) ‘Yes I understand what your company does and how it can be of value to companies
like ours’. This means clarifying if whether the prospect truly understands your company’s value to them.

Statement B) ‘Yes, we definitely have a need for your service’. This means clarifying if whether the prospect feels as though he/she has a need for your product or service.

Statement C) ‘The problem with advancing with your service/product straight away is…’ This means clarifying the prospects real intentions of doing business.

By aiming to achieve clarification on these three issues you will have advanced your business
prospects immediately. If you stumble at A – the remedy is to try to explain your value proposition one more time. If you stumble on B, then see if you can illustrate the need a little better. If you get clarity on C, then you are into negotiation.

 

How to get the 3 Clarifications:

At the end of your meeting, simply ask these following questions formally. Remember that you will have already garnered a great deal of information by the time these questions arise. You may also need to change the tenor of the meeting from ‘informal and chatty’ to ‘formal questions and answers’. Changing at this stage can be extremely powerful as it pushes the meeting towards action.

A typical scenario would be:

Just before we finish up John, for my own notes, can I clarify three essential points…

Firstly I want to make sure that you fully understand what our company does and that you can see the value that it gives to the marketplace. Let the prospect answer and discuss further if
clarification/convincing is needed.

Okay, thank you John. Next, can I clarify that you can see a need for this product/service in your business. Let the prospect answer, if the prospect says there is ‘no need’ be armed with ‘what about’ questions – either some you brainstormed earlier or else ones that may have arisen throughout the conversation.

Lastly, John, you see the value, you know you have a need. What do you feel are the main obstacles that would stop us from commencing with you as soon as possible?

Get an answer for all three of these questions and you really have a PROSPECT!