Strategies to Win Big at Sales Meetings

Reaching company decision makers is tough. They are able to hide behind emails, voicemail and a ferocious front-line of secretaries and personal assistants, gatekeepers who fend off approaches by dozens of people like you every week.  Everyone wants a small piece of their calendar, so when you do manage to set up a meeting it is imperative that you make good use of whatever time they give you.

Whether your sales presentation is to one prospect or a room full of potential customers, these strategies will help you to win more of them over and consequently boost your sales revenue:

1. Do your research

Thorough preparation is vital.  Know your customers, their industries and your products inside out.  You have a much better chance of increasing your conversion rate if you are able to handle any problems and queries, and demonstrate how your solutions can solve the challenges that your clients face.  If you struggle with this, the chances are the meeting will end early and you will lose your sale.  Buyers dislike unprepared sellers.

2. Listen to the customer

Sure the meeting has been arranged so your prospects can hear what you can do for them, but don’t ramble on about your products and company.  A one-way presentation will bore your audience rigid.  Pause and ask questions that exposes issues and problems in their business that your products and services can solve.  Plan these questions in advance.  Flip the focus so that the meeting is about what’s important to the client.  Then demonstrate how you can help them achieve what they want.

5. Be natural

Whether you are on a stage in front of an audience or sitting with one or more prospects around a table, be yourself.  Don’t adopt mannerisms or sayings that you would never normally use.  Most of us can spot a phoney a mile off.  If you want to make more sales, you must first connect with people on a personal level.  You can’t do that if there is a wall of artifice between you and them.

4. Avoid making time-honoured mistakes

An effective strategy is simply to avoid making the most common type of boo-boos that buyers complain about.  We’ve already discussed lack of preparation, but some of the other clangers are failure to listen, over aggressiveness and hosting the meeting as if it were a lecture.

5. Already know your next move

No matter how interesting your conversation, not every meeting will end in a sale.   Don’t leave things languishing with a vague promise of connecting again sometime in the future.  Schedule the next step there and then.  This could be follow-up meeting or a meeting with others in the company.  Whatever it is, get a firm commitment.  The idea is to keep the momentum moving towards a sale.

Sealing the Deal

Prospects are busy people, but they can always make time for a seller who can solve their problems.  Enter sales meetings fully prepared, be yourself and focus on how you can help them. In so doing, you will stand a much better chances of achieving shorter sales cycles, closing more deals, increasing revenues and developing longer lasting and deeper customer relationships.

If you’d like to delve deeper into your own natural meeting style, contact us at Natural Training