Sales Fundamentals 3: Making Sales Meetings Work For You
Sales Fundamentals
By Thomas Jensen
#3: Making Sales Meetings Work For You
As a leader in a large global organization I travel frequently to join teammates on sales meetings.
Some of these reps are what I call ‘coffee drinkers.’ They like to drop in without an appointment and then ‘go with the flow’ and keep their meetings light, conversational, and casual.
These salespeople are enjoying relationships, not doing business.
Don’t get me wrong; good relationship skills are critical to success. But a friendly relationship is a starting point, not an end in itself.
These ‘coffee drinkers’ aren’t practicing good Sales Fundamentals. And, in my experience, they get exposed rather quickly when their results come up short.
So, how does a ‘coffee drinker’ operate?
By going into a meeting with
- No goal
- No agenda
- No plan
And then leaving with no mutually-agreed upon outcome.
Does this list look like an annoying amount of make-work for each and every meeting?
It’s actually a time-saver, ensuring that your valuable selling time is not wasted in any meeting.
Here’s why.
In sales your time is money. Wasting time on activities that don’t plus your income isn’t smart.
The fundamentals to making meetings work for you are straight-forward.
Know your goals. As the famous U.S. baseball player, Yogi Berra said, “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
After you’ve crystalized what you want to achieve in the meeting, make an agenda and then—and this is critical—share the agenda with the people you’re meeting with. Have a quick conversation. Agree on the basic plan for the meeting.
A meeting agenda doesn’t require boardroom-style formality or a thick briefing book.
An agenda grows out of your goals and helps you formulate your plan for the meeting. Keep it simple. The agenda and plan are important because in the ebb and flow of any meeting, you’ll find that a few bullet points jotted down will help you keep things on track.
Will everything go according to plan? Of course not. But with goals, an agenda and a plan, you’re in control even while you pivot and improvise as needed.
At the end of the meeting, know what outcomes you’ve agreed on and level-set with your client or prospect so that each of you is on the same page. You want to avoid the one-sided ‘but I thought you were planning to have X to me by Friday?’ misunderstandings.
So take the time to review meeting conclusions and then agree on follow-ups and deliverables. A critical aspect of this Sales Fundamental is that you document what you’ve agreed on and send this to the client, giving them the chance to sign off.
It can be as simple as: ‘We’ve agreed to a call at 10 AM tomorrow and that prior to the call you’ll send me the following…’ You can list these out as short bullets.
How ‘coffee-drinking’ meetings waste time and make you less successful
How does a ‘coffee drinking’ sales meeting play out? I’ve been on plenty of these. Here’s one example.
Back when I was leading teams in Scandinavia, I flew in to join a colleague for sales meetings. He was bright, charismatic, and an engaging talker.
Back in the office, prepping for the trip, I called him. “What’s our plan for the meetings?”
He answered, “Thomas, I don’t write anything down. “It works like this,” he continued. “When I’m in the neighborhood, I call a client or prospect nearby and ask if they can meet in ten minutes. We get together, have coffee, and talk for half an hour about kids, our lives, sports, whatever comes up. And then, in the last five or ten minutes, I bring up business topics.”
I asked, “How do you reach your objectives? Without goals, or an agenda?”
“Thomas,” he answered, “things get done when the clients and I have a great relationship. Having that relationship gets me to my goals.”
He was enthusiastic about his approach and he was a bright, engaging guy. His results? They were okay but he wasn’t maximizing the results from his territory (which was a very good one).
When I asked to see his notes from his last meeting with the client we were about to see, he opened a large notebook and flipped through the pages. “Here you go.”
I leafed through the notes. “These notes are great. When was the last time you shared these with the customer?”
He shook his head ‘no.’
I told him that I’d created simple forms he could use to track meeting notes and mutually agreed-upon follow-ups. click here for copies Meeting Agenda and Meeting Report.
“That doesn’t work for me. I don’t have time to do clerical typing when I’m with customers.”
Early in my career I wasn’t disciplined about creating meeting minutes. I’d leave with a handshake but (annoyingly, to me) when I’d follow up a few weeks later I’d often find that people ‘remembered clearly’ things I hadn’t promised or not remember commitments that I had written down in my meeting notes.
As I gained experience I learned that this is often a cagey, shrewd negotiating tactic designed to put me back on my heels and squeeze more concessions from me. All very friendly, of course, but I was at a disadvantage because I had not shared my meeting notes with the client to ensure that we both understood what had been discussed and agreed to.
Spending the few minutes typing up and sharing these notes makes the next meeting more efficient. It saves valuable time because you’re advancing an agenda and not retracing steps or politely arguing over who agreed to what.
Plus, with a copy of your notes, customers get a chance to respond and point out any issues. Issues you can address ahead of time.
So, what became of my engaging coffee-drinker?
He continued to turn in decent results but never reached his full potential and stalled career-wise. If he’d followed the Sales Fundamentals he would have been a rising star and a strong future leader in our company. But none of that panned out because he didn’t up his game beyond ‘coffee-drinking.’
Steps to making meetings work for you
These simple steps increase your probability of success.
- Have a goal for each meeting
- Create an agenda and share it with your client so you are sure you cover your bases and so that your client has a chance to prepare for the meeting as well
- Have a plan on how you’ll achieve your goals
- Leave with a mutually agreed-upon set of next steps that you share with your client in writing so that there are no misunderstandings
It’s simple. Saves time. Keeps meetings on point.
And it separates high-earning successful salespeople from the ‘coffee drinkers.’
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© Thomas Jensen 2020