“Why is it so hard to get some decent meetings in the diary?”
If that sounds familiar you are not alone!
Creating a constant stream of customer facing meetings each and every week can be a challenge.
Nearly every salesperson is charged with the same goal of hitting an agreed number of customer meetings each month and probably rightly so.
The fact is that getting quality appointments is vital to your sales success. But it’s not uncommon to find sellers still using ineffective approaches with prospects when attempting to fix a meeting.
Too often I hear salespeople asking customers if they can come in to see them for a ‘catch up’ or to update them on the latest iteration of their product portfolio or service offering.
Whilst this may appear to be a pretty inoffensive approach. What do you think the customer is thinking?
Firstly, they know why you’re calling…they know you want a meeting. The issue is that at this initial stage they don’t see what’s in it for them.
Sure, they might like you and not be opposed in principle to meeting up with you.
But their thought process is likely to be… “I’m really busy, is there any real value in meeting up now?”
Are you meeting resistance getting appointments booked or do you frequently find yourself having them postponed or cancelled? If so, could it be that the perceived value in your customer’s eyes just isn’t high enough?
If so, what can you do to turn this around and demonstrate clearly your value ensuring your diary is packed with quality appointments?
- Change your focus, from you, your product or service and flip it 180 degrees to them. Language used well is powerful, so choose you words and questions wisely. Focus the content of your message to address a key business issue their sector faces or better still one they are personally facing and watch your relevance start to rise.
- Include a few brief comments about a recent case study they can relate to, customers are more interested in hearing what other peers have done to succeed.
- Mention two or three challenges you know you have helped others to resolve and see if they are of interest to them.
- Invite to share with them some fresh ideas and perspectives you have gained working with your best clients to see if they can add value to their own efforts.
Changing the focus from you, your product or service to creating results for your prospective clients is a subtle but profound change in mindset.
One that puts you on the path to making sure Your Value jumps out to everyone you meet!
