This article is part of a 4 part mini-series. If you haven't read any of the others, please start here: Part 1) Staging For A New Client, Part 2) Taking The Prospect's Call!, Part 3) Preparing For The Meeting!Atlas, here we are! Finally, we get to the meeting itself. Now we can go through step by step on how to build a successful meeting in which both parties will come out happy and feel rewarded for their efforts.
Right before you meet your prospect, make sure you have everything ready: Your notes, ideas, and background material together. Also make sure to have a note pad ready so that you can brain storm more ideas.
Greeting Your Prospect:
Once your prospect arrives, greet them with a smile and some "small talk". You'll know right away whether you have good rapport with your prospect or not because, they will want to either; get right down to business or, if you have established a good rapport, they might just want to keep talking for a little while. If your time permits it, and if your prospect doesn't seem in a hurry, try not to go right into the business at hand. Instead, get to know your prospect because in the end, doing business with others is about people, not just about the money.
Insert Your Companies Background Information:
I try to make it a habit to use this entry spot for background information about myself, my business, and the future of my company. I do this right away just to weave out any doubts my prospects may have. This usually let's the prospect know that, they have made the right decision. It also shows that you're confident about what you do. Without being arrogant, go through some of the information you collected to illustrate the details your prospect might not have learned about you previously. Be careful about how much time you spend talking about yourself. 5-10 Minutes is fine.
Time To Hit Them With Your Research:
Now that my prospect is growing a little more faith in me, I take this opportunity to hit them with my "homework" (As discussed in step2), and also to build upon the ideas I've had. I usually start by recapping what we talked about so far, while inserting more ideas on top. This helps to paint a "bigger picture" for my prospect which they will start to ponder in their mind. This will also show them how serious I am about their business, and that I actually spent some time out of my busy day to gather helpful information.
Try To Get Some Feedback:
Giving your prospect new ideas above and beyond what you've already talked about will open new doorways that were never there before. Be very careful to listen to your prospects needs after you tell them about your ideas. Some ideas never work out but, many of them spawn off other new strategies that you didn't even think of previously. It's these "NEW" ideas that are worth gold. Now you can start getting a taste of potential future business with your prospect which they have already been thinking about, but may not of wanted to bring it up right away. Trust is the key, once you establish that, the door will be open.
This "feedback" from your prospect is what will determine whether or not you will increase the sale right there and then. Without going too far off topic, explore these new ideas. Take your time, show your prospect that your really thinking about these new ideas, and that you truly want to help them to fully understand the implications of this newly found strategy.
Brainstorming this way may go on for the rest of the meeting. This is exactly what your after. The more you can get out of your prospect strategizing together right then and there, the more likely you will be closer to creating a business foundation with them, and a lifetime client.
Recap Everything You Talked About:
Once your business is concluded, just recap what you've written down within your notes and tell your prospect about any miscellaneous details they should know about the procedures of your operation. This way your prospect won't leave without knowing when they should start seeing results (Please note: If your selling products, by this time, you've probably already made your sale, your business is done but remember to keep in touch with them).
Finish up the meeting and make sure to re-iterate when you will be contacting them to report the progress. The key afterwards is to make sure that you keep in touch when you said you would, and to actually out-perform everything you mentioned in your meeting.
If you do everything right, you will have created a client for life. Not only that but, if your newly found client has made arrangements with other companies about the same project, 9/10 times when they go to discuss the same project with others, they will only be able to concentrate on all the ideas you had previously discussed with them.
There have been many of times when my prospect, now client had cancelled their next meeting with my competitors because they truly believed that it would simply be a waste of time.
This One Time...
"In fact one time, a person I had met with was going directly from my office to an associate of mine to discuss the same project. He mentioned that he was going to see "so & so" and I had told him that I personally knew this person. What happened next shocked me, my prospect actually called this "so & so" right there and then and told them that they had just concluded their meeting with me, and that they felt it would be a waste of time to speak with anybody else. I was quite flattered, and felt a great deal of confidence in the trust I had just built with them in a short amount of time. The next day, I spoke to this "so & so" and he congratulated me on a job well done. My new client eventually came back for more business over the many years, and ended up spending thousands of dollars on all of my services, not only just one."
Building meetings this way, and actually delivering what you set out to do will also help to increase your referrals a great deal. Every meeting will turn your prospects into walking, talking billboards for your business.
In Conclusion:
Practice what you've learned so far and I guarantee you that your meeting skills will improve in many ways. It takes a lot of practice to fine-tune these meeting skills. I am still working on fine-tuning my meeting, and presentation skills. Every person I meet brings me different challenges.
Just in case you're wondering, here are some stats I kept for the year 2004:
- 34% Of all direct email requests via online signed for one, or more service.
- 78% Of all direct phone calls turned into a live meeting.
- 96% Of all prospects that walked through my door signed a contract.
- 73% Of these prospects came back for repeat business.
- 98% Spent more money than they originally came to me for.
- 68% Received ALL of my services, not just the one they came to me for.
I hope you've enjoyed this 4 part series and may you have much success!
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