Getting ready to sell

Picture this. You have an appointment next week with your most important prospect. You are meeting with senior management. Are you getting ready to sell? You had better be planning now, because your selling starts well before you meet your prospect — your selling starts now.

• Who will attend? The more important the sales call, the more important it is to check on who is going to be in the meeting along with you. If technical people will be attending, you might bring along technical data to discuss or leave behind. If purchasing will be attending, they have different concerns. I suggest to my clients that they call the administrative assistant to confirm who will be in the meeting. Ask for the names and titles of the people attending. That way you can Google them before you get to the meeting. By knowing as much as possible about them, you will be more confident and less stressed.

• What is important? Executive time is a scarce resource. Your job is to value their time. I’ve seen meetings fail when salespeople don’t confirm the executive’s meeting objective. That must be done at the beginning of the meeting. If the prospect doesn’t take the lead, the salesperson starts with an assumption of the meeting’s goals. You can say, “I wanted to make sure we make the best use of your time. I thought we could discuss how we can work together to reduce your production costs. Would that meet your objectives?” You give your prospects a chance to modify the meeting to meet their objectives, not yours. You also increase the odds that the executive will stay in the meeting and not abruptly end it because it’s wasting his time.

• How will you succeed? The only way your meeting can be considered a success is if you meet your objectives. Before the meeting, make sure you set both minimum and maximum objectives for the meeting. What do you want to accomplish that you don’t have now? A minimum objective is the least you’ll accomplish to be successful. An example is to acquire a specific piece of information. A maximum objective is larger, like getting approval for a test project.

Plan your objectives before the meeting — they’re your road map to guide you during the sales call.

Now that you’ve planned everything out, you’re ready to meet your prospect and sell.

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