The Three Meeting Close

Over 30 years ago I decided to make a career in sales. I really loved the customer and prospect interaction, and when I was armed with a great message and a joy of helping, I really felt that I could advance any sales situation.  I think most salespeople have upped their game over the last several years given the demands of operating in a remote economy. 

But no matter the venue, no matter the technology, there are three critical sales meetings that must be mastered to ensure sales success. These three meetings fall into three categories I call coffee talk, discovery, and playback. Too often salespeople when they hear a cue or a few spoken words that sound like interest, they move the solution to fast and too soon. Most of these opportunities are stalling on their pipeline as a result. 

But when you can isolate these three key interactions you give prospects and current customers an opportunity to engage you in the way that’s more aligned with how they buy. 

Coffee Talk

Coffee talk meetings, while on the face of it sound innocent and informal, have critical importance to the sales process and the ability to advance sales situations. For these meetings it's important to come prepared to be spontaneous but be clear about what you want to accomplish. Unfortunately, three things can happen in a coffee talk meeting and two of them are bad. For the bad, this is typically the prospect or the salesperson dominating the conversation and giving little air to what could be next or what a potential relationship might look like. The key is to ensure that both parties get equal time, and that the salesperson gets to ask about the prospects journey, where they are now, and where they are going. The best make time to playback 2 to 3 major points of interest and use those as fodder to request the second meeting.

Discovery

Discovery meetings are important because you need to get certain questions answered by your prospect, as well as to obtain a vision of their ideal scene. The art as well as the science in discovery is to have the prospect feel that this is meaningful dialogue, and not an interrogation. Any question asked should elicit a response that can be used to shape several ideas or earn the salesperson the right to share more formal recommendations. But before going to proposal, you need to let the prospect know that is your plan and if they are aligned. Translation - discovery is also about qualification. 

Playback

The playback meeting is the meeting most often left out of the average sales pursuit. The value of the playback meeting is it puts the salesperson in position to make an "intelligent recommendation" - a contextual subset of high-level recommendations used to shape a final proposal. The concept here is rough layouts sell better than finished ones. The playback meeting allows the prospect to process your ideas and see themselves in a potential relationship with you and your firm. You want to be able to say to a prospect, "based on what you shared with us, here are a few specific recommendations." This personalizes the process and builds trust since you're working with what the prospect said about their situation, not solely your interpretation. Think of the playback meeting as the proposal without the money. 

To make sure you ace your next series of prospects meetings, contact Bill Walton at bwalton@billwaltonsalestraining.com.