My husband has said this so many times and he is so often right.  When prospective clients “go dark” or “off the grid” as we say around my house, it is often not a great sign.  This week’s Meeting to Win sales team agenda is Part 3 in our Maximize Customer Meetings Series.  Part 3 is about what you do after the meeting to maximize your customer meeting. 

Here is one thing to do to guard against the enemy of time.  Do your follow-up items right away.  You can control the pace and momentum of your opportunity if you set a timeline with the customer and set the pace with timely follow-up with the next steps.  Get your internal team mobilized and committed to fast turnaround, also.  Don’t wait 48 hours to send your thank yous and set next steps.  Get it done ASAP! 

As more and more time passes, priorities shift and obstacles are introduced in the process.  Keep the pace and don’t let time kill your deals. 

Join us for weekly sales team meeting agendas by subscribing to Meeting to Win HERE.  (Upcoming Sales Team Meeting Agendas include 10 Things You Don’t Know and Playing to Win or Playing to NOT Lose?.  Subscribe now and join us for these upcoming sales meeting topics and the new Sales Performance Book Club, Mind of the Customer.)

I subscribe to the daily sales quotes from Just Sell.  Earlier this week they sent out this timely quote on luck.  It got me thinking about how people create their own luck.  As a St. Patrick’s Day wish, I want to include 10 Ways to Create Your Own Luck. 

10 Ways to Create Your Own Luck

(Plus Sales Team Meeting Idea)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from Meeting to Win

1.  Execute 5 Cold Calls per Day.

2.  Add a new active Referral Partner monthly.

3.  Know your top 10 most commonly heard objections and be prepared to address them.

4.  Have a formula for strong Opening Statements and use it… everytime.

5.  Learn to recognize bad deals and walk away from them.

6.  Read the Wall Street Journal every weekday.

7.  Consult with a team mate weekly on live deals.

8.  Conduct quarterly business reviews with existing customers.

9.  Read a business book every quarter.

10.  Study your customers and come up with one new idea to help a customer every week. 

HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

As a team:

• Share times in your professional life when you “got lucky”. 
• What led up to that luck?
• Create a list of how salespeople can create their own luck.  You can start with the list above and add to it.
• At the end of the meeting, each salesperson should commit to one thing from the list they are currently NOT doing and will START doing.

We are in week #3 of  the Maximize Customer Meetings sales team meeting agenda series.  Our Meeting to Win subscribers get a new, 60-minute sales team meeting agenda by e-mail each Friday. This week Maximize Customer Meetings: After the Meeting is delivered to subscribers.  I came across an article from Kelley Robertson on effective follow-up that supports this week’s topic.  Enjoy!

The Impact of Follow-Up by Kelley Robertson

This got me wondering…why don’t people follow-up? I think there are several reasons.

Read the rest here.

We are in the middle of our Maximizing Customer Meetings Sales Team Meeting Agenda series.  To enhance the series, we’ve called on some top selling experts to share their strategies for maximizing customer meetings.  This post is brought to us by Mary Donato, President at Applied Principles, a sales and marketing professional services firm that helps Fortune 1000 companies achieve sales and marketing excellence.

The Win-Win Sales Call by Mary Donato

How to get centered on your client so you both succeed.

As the Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, I have had the opportunity to interact with many outstanding marketing and sales organizations. Recently, I observed one member’s top sales consultant prepare for an important initial call with a prospective customer. It was like listening to a well-orchestrated play: He knew what questions he wanted to ask at the beginning of the call and set an objective to get a complete list of the client’s issues before having any discussion about a solution to their problem. He even anticipated objections and how he would respond. By mentally going through the conversations in advance, the consultant was thoroughly prepared for the call before stepping into the client’s office. The goal of these efforts was to insure that he could find a solution that would meet the customer’s specific needs. I asked him what he would do if the solution wasn’t a good fit, and he replied that he would advise the prospect, stop the sales cycle, and move on to the next opportunity. Why am I highlighting this story? Far too many salespeople don’t attempt—or don’t know how—to truly understand client needs and what would be an effective solution for them. In the end, time, energy, and money are wasted, both on the seller’s and buyer’s part. So, what makes a great sales call? A good start is having a philosophy of caring deeply for what it takes to make the customer successful. The Sales Performance Group (SPG) at FranklinCovey, based in Salt Lake City, has a sales training and coaching curriculum called “Helping Clients Succeed,” which provides a practical framework and process for understanding the client’s exact needs and issues. The founder of SPG, Mahan Khalsa, author of Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play, offers several key principles for becoming “maniacally” client-focused:

SALES ISN’T ABOUT SELLING It’s about helping clients succeed. The job of a salesperson is to provide expanded awareness of possibilities and superior choices to facilitate a process for clients to make decisions in their own best interests.

 INTENT COUNTS MORE THAN TECHNIQUE Get crystal clear about your intent before you pick up the phone or walk through the door, because it’s going to affect everything else that follows. Make sure it’s an intent that’s focused on the client’s best interests.

 SOLUTIONS HAVE NO INHERENT VALUE Solutions derive value only from the problems they solve and the results they produce. To truly understand client needs, you need to move off the solution (a counterintuitive move, especially for salespeople).You must, instead, objectively explore issues, problems, and desired results, as well as what criteria the client will use to make a decision.

 NO GUESSING Too often, a question you want to ask the client may come to mind, but for whatever reason you don’t ask it. For example, “From what you have described, you seem to be happy with your current solution.Why would you consider changing?” or “How much funding have you allocated for this project?”or “What criteria will you be using to make your decision?”To help clients succeed, you need to learn how to ask these hard questions in a soft way. If you don’t ask these questions, it leaves you to guess the answers. If there’s a fit, work together, make money, and have fun. If there is no fit, find out quickly, shake hands, and part friends. And if your solution doesn’t fit, or they have more pressing needs, maybe you can recommend where they can find another answer. By doing this, you could become a trusted advisor to the client.

This is Part 3 in our Maximize Customer Meetings Series.  This Friday, March 19th, the third agenda in the series goes out to subscribers.  The 3 part series will soon be available on our store, also.  To get weekly sales team meeting exercises that cover this and many more selling topics, subscribe to Meeting to Win today. 

You’ve followed the steps to prepare and execute a productive customer meeting.  You’re not done yet!  To maximize the work done on this customer meeting so far, it is helpful to send comprehensive and organized Meeting Notes after the meeting.  This is where many sales professionals quit.  Following up thoroughly is a great way to gain a competitive edge in a sales cycle.

Get started the day of your customer meeting.

• Typically, sales representatives will send a quick thank you note via email to the customer. 
• In that short thank you e-mail, let the customer know you will send them more comprehensive Meeting Notes to outline everything discussed and agreed upon along with a timeline of next steps.

 This action gives the customer some ownership in this process immediately following the meeting and sets you both up to accomplish something, therefore, maximizing your meeting. 

Within 48 hours send your Meeting Notes.  Meeting Notes should include:

1. A bulleted list of the information the sales representative learned about the customer’s needs.
2. A list of action items for both the sales rep and the customer along with time lines.
3. A couple of bullets with high-level ideas on possible solutions you discussed while meeting.
4. Possible pricing scenarios (if discussed in meeting).
5. Call to action. At this point, let the customer know what to expect next.  For example, “we will contact your administrative assistant to set up a time for you to tour our plant”.

 Benefits of using Meeting Notes after a customer meeting:

• By outlining this in writing post-meeting the customer has the opportunity to correct any wrong or missing information. This is critically important for the sales representative who is formulating a solution.
• This demonstrates to the customer that the sales representative has a clear understanding of the needs which builds confidence and trust and ultimately rapport.
• Customer is agreeing to next steps and is sharing in the ownership of finding a solution.
• Often customers use these Meeting Notes internally to share progress on finding a solution or to report to senior leaders.  This builds your good reputation with more of your customer’s leadership, saves them work and demonstrates that you have their best interests in mind.
• Clear communication along the way is critically important when problems or misunderstandings arise in sales cycles.  The relationship built along the way can make or break a sales as it gets closer to closing.

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

• Ask the team to come prepared to discuss a recent customer meeting that resulted in next steps.
• As a team, write your Meeting Notes and share them with the group.
• Provide feedback for each other on appearance, communication style and ease of use.
• To get more in depth sales training exercises and practice on this topic, subscribe for Meeting to Win sales team meeting agendas here.

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We write this blog to help improve the sales performance of our readers and subscribers.  Answer this one question to keep us focused on your needs: 

What is one selling activity your team could do more effectively that …read the rest and share your answer here.

Look for ideas based on your answers in the coming posts.  Thank you from the Meeting to Win team.

(We are continuing with our Meeting to Win 3-week sales team meeting agenda series, Maxmize Customer Meetings.  We invited a friend of Meeting to Win, Kathleen Steffey, CEO and Founder of Naviga Business Services  to share some great advice for the before the meeting in Don’t Wing It.)

Don’t Wing It

by Kathleen Steffey, CEO/Founder of Naviga Business Services

Quiz time:  What are the five biggest challenges your prospects and clients are dealing with and how does your solution address them?

 If you can’t answer that question, you need to hit the books. How can you possibly position your solution as a way to relieve your prospect’s pain if you don’t understand the source of their discomfort?

A solid working knowledge of industry issues lets you anticipate the most common objections and develop standard responses that overcome them. It lets you develop a standard list of leading questions that shift the focus from the prospect’s concern about spending money to the return they will realize from their investment into your solution.

 It keeps you in control of the sales process and helps you establish a rapport and build a foundation of trust.

 Is your client’s industry faced with a talent shortage? If so, how does your solution help the prospect function effectively with fewer people, or raise their profile so they can better-compete for top professionals?

 Is the economic downturn causing belt-tightening? If so, how does your solution help lower production costs, reduce overhead or improve productivity?

 Top sales professionals make time to keep up on the industries they serve. They read the top trade journals, find the blogs and online sites that cover their business and industry. They listen to what their clients are saying.

 Follow their lead. Use the information you glean from these sources to develop a library of standard responses and questions. Practice them until you know them cold.

 Now you’re ready to respond to whatever objection your prospects throw at you so you can lead them down the path to a value-based sale.

(Meeting to Win thanks Kathleen for her insights in Don’t Wing It.  To get weekly sales team meeting agendas on Maxmizing Customer Meetings and many other sales performance topics, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas today.  We look forward to working with you.)

Enjoy a sales meeting agenda idea for your next sales meeting.

Ask your team to dust off (literally) the sales training manual from your latest sales training session.  Assign each person on the team one section and ask them to lead the team in the exercises, role plays and discussions from the training session over the course of the next few sales team meetings.  This will reinforce the training you’ve already received and give the team a chance to practice the new skills. 

Start each meeting with an update from each person regarding how they used the previous week’s lesson in the field and the outcome of that effort.

Enjoy your sales meetings while building your sales skills.

(To get new sales meeting agendas each week, join Meeting to Win.  We provide energizing, fun sales team meeting agendas for motivating sales meetings.)

We are in the middle of our Maximizing Customer Meetings Sales Team Meeting Agenda series.  To enhance the series, we’ve called on some top selling experts to share their strategies for maximizing customer meetings.  This post is brought to us by Mary Donato, President at Applied Principles, a sales and marketing professional services firm that helps Fortune 1000 companies achieve sales and marketing excellence.

(To subscribe to receive weekly sales team meeting agendas like Maximizing Customer Meetings, visit us HERE.)

Pre-Call Planning for Success

By Mary Donato

Every salesperson would like to have more appointments with more decision-makers. The reality is, these are relatively rare events—particularly with regard to the C-suite.

So once you do get that all-important meeting set up, how much time do you spend preparing for it? The majority of sales calls are won or lost before the salesperson even steps into the client’s office. This is due to the amount of time spent planning for the call. Pre-call planning is one of the most critical steps before any important client meeting. It can take 15 minutes, or even days, depending upon the complexity and importance of the business to your company and goals.

In spite of its critical importance, pre-call planning is a relatively simple endeavor. Here are six steps to incorporate into your own planning process:

Read the rest…

(To get a 60-Minute Sales Team Meeting Agenda on Objection Strategy with Role Plays, visit our STORE.)

As salespeople, we hear objections, pushbacks and questions during a sales cycle.  Our goal must always be to provide our customers with the best possible solutions to get them the results they desire.  With that in mind, it is our responsibility to effectively address objections and pushbacks.  By “effectively address”, I mean that we need to be prepared for our most common questions or objections and make sure we understand what is driving the concern.  We must get to the real need or issue that the objection is raising.  Only when we thoroughly address issues can the customer make the best possible decision about what is best for their company.

To do this, a salesperson must first identify all the objections they hear.  It is helpful to list these by stage of the sales cycle.  For example, create a chart that lists the steps in your sales cycle from suspect to negotiation and then list the objections you typically hear at each stage of the sales cycle.

Then, based on the stage of the sales cycle, determine why they may have that objection, concern or question.  What might be driving that concern or objection (they are afraid the solution costs too much, they work with your competitor already, they really don’t have authority to take it any further, etc).

Then, determine the best way to learn the reason behind the objection.  What questions will you ask?  How will you communicate in a way that does not cause the customer to become defensive?  How can you open them up to share their thoughts behind the concern?

Now, that you have gone through this exercise for each objection you hear, you are prepared for the next time those objections arise – and you know they will.  You’ll actually look forward to addressing these objections as an important part of helping your customer make great decisions for them and their company.  In many cases, you’ll be able to address the objection before they even raise it.

Being prepared to help our customers is our responsibility as sales professionals.  So, we know we get objections and pushbacks. There is no excuse for not being prepared for them.

Look forward to objections this week!

(To download the Objection Strategy & Role Plays Sales Team Meeting Agenda, visit our STORE here.  This 60-Minute Sales Team Meeting Agenda will leave your sales team with a strategy for handling your most common objections leaving them more equipped to win that very day.)