How to get meetings

Not so easy to do, which is why people pay for "qualified " sales leads.

Others though claim it is easy to do - you just need to have the right pitch!

More often than not this advice comes from people who do not actually earn their living from making sales.

Make no mistake getting a meeting is a sell...its a close. Someone has to give up some of their valuable time to one of the many people who contact them. Are they going to do that for someone to come in and:

"update you on our products and services".....nope

"talk about your challenges and solutions you may have"...nope

"tell you what's going on in your industry and competitors"....nope...well maybe

Again they are giving up something of value...their time...they will only do that if they are getting something in return...something that will benefit them and their business.

There are no discovery journeys anymore where you get meetings discuss their challenge go away, come up with a solution and then get another meeting to present your solution. This advice still occupies some sales books...but it is nonsense... your first meeting is when you problem solve, or ideally before you go to the meeting and present solutions.

They don't have to be the right solutions because you can't get all your information you need prior to the meeting there is some discovery that still take place in meetings. However even if you are not presenting the perfect solution or even not a relevant one - you can demonstrate your thinking. Remember that in your mathematics classes, you get marks for showing your working. I believe I passed my maths exam by probably not getting any questions right but by showing by working and demonstrating my thought process.

You can do the same thing with clients the solution may not be right but you can show your working - that you have thought about your clients problems, analysed them, and tried to come up with solutions. They can see you have put the work in, that your way of thinking may help you suggest a good solution if they help you with some of the inputs - information you need to know.

The other aspect to this is, if you speak to enough clients you are more likely to find they have similar challenges so you are more likely to hit on the right challenge if you have spoken to enough prospects.

So you have to suggest relevant or possibly relevant problems that you can solve, some indication of how you might go about solving it and some proof points or social proof as they are now referred to - clients that you have actually helped. I have often found this a challenge, just as quantifying the results is not always possible despite being told you must do this - I think it sometimes sounds canned when you say you have achieved 29% cost savings or ROI . It pays to be honest, if you have not offered this solution before, or no client has taken you up on it - say so. If the problem and your proposed solution is interesting enough clients are OK with being the first to try this solution. Yes I know many follow the he

rd and want to see solutions that have worked for similar companies to them to mitigate risk - I do think the modern buyer is more innovative in looking at solutions and would listen to other ideas for mitigating risk. If you are selling just off the back of..."this worked for other companies just like you"...I think you are in a transaction space - which is not ideal.

In my experience brief emails with bullet points (Works on short calls too) are the best ways of getting attention, certainly most of my prospects do not have time to read detailed emails. How many times have you seen client ask for a brief agendas before agreeing to a meeting - that's a clue. They want short one liners so they can assess if there is anything interesting for them to know more about.