book.chapter Pre-meeting preparation

The journey to effective selling begins long before the actual sales meeting takes place. It involves thorough preparation, enabling you to position yourself as a credible problem solver for your client. Essentially, the goal prior to a sales meeting is to diminish the barriers of unfamiliarity with your clients. By understanding them and allowing them to understand you, you pave the way for a more successful sales interaction. It is a well-known fact that individuals are hesitant to make purchases from those they do not know. Therefore, your primary objective is to transition from being perceived as a stranger to becoming a familiar figure. To facilitate this process of familiarization with potential clients before attempting to sell them your product or service, there are several strategies you can employ. A significant aspect of selling more effectively involves adopting a more thoughtful approach towards understanding the daily challenges and problems faced by your prospect. Employing the Productive Thinking model, which consists of six steps, can greatly aid in this. Initially, you engage in a thorough exploration of the current situation by asking, "What's going on?" This step is crucial for avoiding assumptions and identifying the specific problems and challenges that need resolution. Following this, defining what success looks like is essential. This involves establishing clear and measurable criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of your solution, ensuring that these criteria align with your prospect's expectations. The next step involves pinpointing the core problem by identifying the one critical question that, once answered, can lead to an ideal solution. Subsequently, brainstorming a comprehensive list of potential solutions is necessary, even if some ideas may seem unrealistic at first. This is followed by refining the most viable solution and finally, aligning the necessary resources to implement this solution. This structured approach not only enhances your problem-solving capabilities but also fosters creativity and innovation in developing solutions. Tim Hurson and Tim Dunne emphasize that being an exceptional salesperson requires being genuinely useful to your client, primarily by assisting in problem-solving. Applying the principles and tools of Productive Thinking to the sales process is advocated as an effective method for achieving this. The initial challenge in the sales process is to secure a meeting with the prospect. Discovering common interests and connections can significantly reduce the perception of you as a stranger. Productive Selling involves leveraging these commonalities to build rapport. Developing a series of concise elevator pitches or scripts based on common interests can enhance your credibility and facilitate further discussion. These scripts should be focused, tell a brief story, be relevant to the client, and always conclude with an open question to encourage dialogue. The effectiveness of these scripts is heightened by their brevity and relevance. The overarching goal of all preparatory activities before the sales meeting is to persuade prospects to agree to meet with you. This involves transitioning from being seen as an outsider to someone more familiar and less intimidating. Leads can originate from various sources, including referrals from satisfied clients, personal networking, and serendipitous connections. Once a meeting is secured, it is crucial to conduct thorough research on the prospect to ensure a productive and credible interaction. This research can include online searches, social media reviews, and leveraging your network for insights. Organizing this information into a structured format can help identify key discussion points for the meeting. Finally, conducting a "Before Action Review" (BAR) is a critical step before meeting with a prospect. This involves defining the desired outcomes, identifying potential risks, determining the resources you are willing to invest, articulating your vision and values, and establishing essential, measurable outcomes. The DRIVE acronym serves as a guide for this process, ensuring a clear understanding of what success looks like for the endeavor. This preparatory work is foundational to achieving a successful sales meeting, as it ensures you are well-informed, aligned with the prospect's needs, and ready to present your solutions effectively.