Do you ever feel like you could win far more business if you could just find a way to get in front…
You may have experienced challenges getting time with your ideal prospects for first meetings or even initial ‘Strategy Calls’.
Do you ever feel like you could win far more business if you could just find a way to get in front of more of the business people you want to connect with?
You may have experienced challenges getting time with your ideal prospects for first meetings or even initial ‘Strategy Calls’.
If you’ve felt frustrated, confused or ‘dead in the water’ and don’t know what to do to create high quality first meetings with your ideal prospects then relax, there is a solution.
If whatever you’ve tried in the past has left you feeling confused and overwhelmed, I’m going to solve that for you right now.
Simply by showing you a little known concept that’ll allow you to dictate the number of high quality first meetings you want with your dream prospects each and every month.
This blog post will hand you that solution on a plate.
You see, this post is dramatically different to others you may have read because it covers a unique way of creating value for your best prospects, that literally compels them to want to meet you.
How?
“We do this by delivering HUGE value to your prospect so it just makes sense to meet”
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Your prospects are busy, time short, task overloaded and simply don’t have time to waste. Therefore, getting a time slot in their diary to show you add massive value to them is extremely difficult.
Question: What Value Do You Add?
Before you read the rest of this blog post stop and ask yourself this question:
Q: What value do you contribute on your first engagement with a prospect?
When I ask my clients what value their prospects get from their first engagement, the answer, after a long pause and much head scratching, is generally something like:
“Well, none really. I have to ask them these questions to be able to qualify them, or to prepare a proposal or more in-depth demonstration.”
And there is the problem.
If your goal at this very early stage of the sales cycle is to set a first meeting, whether physical or virtual, you should treat it very much like a product you can sell.
So here’s where my unique ‘meeting productization concept‘ will uncover the exact process to make prospects say YES to you — Almost every time
It’s actually quite simple.
You, like me, have a goal which is to make it easy for your prospect to say yes to you.
To make it so easy to say yes your prospects are almost compelled to agree to meet you because it just ‘makes sense’ to say yes.
Therefore, to effectively ‘SELL’ the value of engaging with you, you have to ensure you have created enough PERCEIVED value that can be articulated as to why someone should invest 20 or 30 minutes of their time with you.
Without value why would anyone, apart from those really desperate for a solution and information hunters, agree to it?
“Just a few tweaks to what you already have going on will create a flood of new meetings for you”
don’t believe me?
By the time you’ve read the complete blog post you’ll have an entirely different perspective on how to create value for your prospects.
If you can communicate value to the 20- 30 minutes (or however long) of your first meeting, then your conversion rates will go through the roof.
You, or your prospecting staff (in house or outsourced) will be capable of articulating precisely what value someone will receive in that first conversation with you.
And the prospect will have no other option other than to see that it just “makes sense!” to book a time in to meet you.
And just like that, you’ve created an irresistible offer to your prospect!
Dispelling Myths About Sales And Sales Systems:
Before you read on to the meeting productization concept there are some myths about selling and sales processes you must be clear on before you can truly harness the massive rewards in new business available to you.
Myth 1: Selling is sleazy and pushy.
There is a growing body of writing and ‘opinion’ preaching a viewpoint that you can sell without selling.
What this is doing is praying on your natural fear and hesitation about making contact with people. What they aren’t telling you is selling is the only thing that leads to action. And it’s action that you want your prospects to take.
Anything other than selling is telling… and telling just conveys information.
Only selling leads to action.
If you have challenges around ‘selling’ then that’s your mental stuff that’s being prayed upon.
Selling leads to ACTION.
If your current thinking is:
“our clients buy our services because they recognize our expertise”…
…then you’ll have zero business unless you embrace the fact that selling is not sleazy or pushy — it’s the only thing that’ll lead to other people taking an action.
Myth 2: Consultative selling in a first meeting will establish you as an expert
Too many sales models assume your prospect will welcome you with open arms and will want to talk freely with you which is naive at best.
Your prospect must be willing to discuss and carefully look at their needs with you.
Unless they’re willing and ready to interact with you in such an open way, the consultative sales process can not take place.
As you’ve experienced, this very rarely happens on the first meeting with cold prospects.
i.e. Ones you’ve made contact with who have NOT sought you out.
Before you can identify their needs by asking lots of great consultative questions, you must first create an atmosphere of trust that invites discussion and an exchange of ideas.
Most prospects won’t just open themselves and their business up to you.
They won’t share their needs. And they certainly won’t be forthcoming with their frustrations and goals.
Before you address needs you must first sell yourself.
And with consulting, this very often means selling your expertise.
If you’re attempting to begin a needs based conversation and involve the prospect before they are ready, you’re actually creating the very thing you fear the most — resistance and rejection.
Myth 3: People buy outcomes
I’m sure you’ve heard this many times.
However, what people haven’t told you is when you’re looking to create first meetings, this concept can mistakenly lead you to again create the resistance and rejection.
You’re likely to be begging to talk to your prospect about:
What results they could achieve if they became a client
How easy it is to onboard with you as client
And many more client based ‘outcomes’…
BUT these all increase the likelyhood of rejection because the only thing the prospect cares about is the outcome of the meeting itself.
Nothing else.
Talking about becoming a client will reduce your chances of getting a first meeting dramatically.
The answer is to focus on the outcome of the meeting using my unique ‘meeting productization concept which I can explain to you in a Predictable Pipeline Strategy Call with me.
The Meeting Productization Concept
This strategy involves taking a largely intangible, hard to define meeting, that may or may not be adding value…
…IN THE PROSPECTS MINDS NOT YOURS…
and turn it into a tangible value creating ‘product’ that they understand, just ‘GET’ and ads value to them.
What Value Are Your Ideal Prospects Looking For?
If your prospects are senior business people like CEO’s and VPS, you’ll get great success in creating value in the first meeting if you know exactly what value they are seeking.
A research project by the Rain Group shows senior executives ranked sales people as winners when they “educated me with new ideas or perspectives”
This was given as the number-one reason sales superstars stood out.
This is no surprise to me.
A major research piece by Kenan Flagler Business School and IBM, into selling to senior executives, showed they spent most of their time at the beginning 3 phases of company purchase decisions:
Assessing the competitive landscape
Evaluating alternatives
Setting strategy
They confirmed:
“Because senior executives are concerned with their organisation’s business needs they are most likely to meet someone early in a sales cycle to assess the potential business value of the proposed sale. To gain a spot on our respondent’s calendars, salespeople must show that a meeting will provide valuable information”
After these 3 phases of a buying cycle, executives pass decisions over to a more traditional Decision Making Unit and step out of the process, only to come back to rubber sign the developed solution.
So what can we do with this knowledge?
Quite simply…
Structure your sales system to provide strategic value to your prospect
Here’s an example:
A client in the technology industry was struggling to get first meetings with IT directors of UK top-500 accounts.
They decided to commission a wide-ranging research piece into the effect of emerging technology and how it would impact their target prospects.
They cleverly made it about a level above their technology, so it wasn’t seen to be promotional and too narrowly focused.
They then got the independent research company to sell that research on their website for £2,000 even though they never expected to sell any that way. They never intended to make money from it though…
That was strategic planning at its best!
Because when they were communicating the value of having a first meeting with them they were able to lead with:
Our consultant will also bring with him 5 copies of [independent research companies] whitepaper on ‘The emerging disruptive technology trends in the xxxx industry and how market-leading organisations should be gearing up to leverage them for competitive advantage’, which is currently on sale for £2,000 on their website. If you gain nothing else from the meeting, which is unlikely, then as a minimum, Steve will leave you with £10,000 worth of research to distribute in the company.
Did this approach work?
Absolutely!
Their conversion rate went from around 1 in 15 calls closing for a meeting to around 8 out of 10.
This is just 1 of 5 different strategies I cover to help clients productize their first engagement.
While you read the rest of the blog to get an insight into these 5 strategies it’s important to know that there’s a next step in our relationship, which is to register for a Predictable Pipeline Strategy Call with me personally, where I go into these strategies in much more detail.
The 5 Meeting Productization Strategies
1) An understanding of a strategic issue by providing your own or third party research
Senior business people are isolated. They probably know more about you and your competitors than you do, but they lack insights into business issues and the competitive landscape.
What strategic value can you create in the meeting that’ll educate on new ideas and perspectives?
What research do you have or can be created by you or others to achieve this result?
2) A creation of A Plan Or Strategy for them
Create a strategic plan for them based on what you know about the Industry and your expertise.
Break it out into short and long range business objectives, and make assumptions based on your expertise.
That’s powerful because you can discuss these assumptions as a way of building trust with your prospect, and it’ll help them open up to you about their needs.
3) A detailed ‘How To’ complete with blue-prints, worksheets and implementation plans
Walk them through a number of detailed checklists, worksheets and implementation plans that they can distribute internally and can be actioned by their staff.
Base these on your expertise and experience with similar companies, and best of all, the results you’ve achieved with past clients.
An example I might use could be:
Example Script
John, I worked with Big Corp (their competitor) where I designed a sales system that increased their first prospect meeting from 4 to 20 per month, which resulted in an extra $200k closed business per month. I’ve documented that exact same process with all of the value creation procedures, the technology guides, the templates, the scripts and the detailed implementation plans. I’d be happy to run through those with you and leave you the full set at the end of our meeting. You should easily be able to take those and add an extra $100k per month by yourself within 60 days”
I think 8 out of 10 targeted prospects would agree to that. Don’t you think?
4) A small piece of ‘done for you’ work that I’ll do prior to or as a result of the first meeting/call. Maybe the first piece of work you’d do if they became a client
The thing about large consulting projects is they can be largely intangible.
You may struggle to ‘sell’ the idea of what you’ll achieve when someone becomes a client, BUT you have a fantastic process to take care of them when they become a client.
How can you take that first bit of consulting work you usually do with them when they become a client, and offer it as a way of adding tangible value to the first meeting?
5) An educational piece like a lunch and learn or a high level Executive Briefing that delivers huge BENEFITS to the prospect
In some industries ‘lunch and learn’ or ‘Executive Briefings’ have been common place.
The challenge is they’ve been grossly misused and badly implemented.
When done right they’re a fantastic way to productize a first meeting and add tangible value to your prospect.
How can you take this concept and structure it to OVER-deliver value in your first meeting?
Busy business people are desperately looking for people to bring them ideas and opinions. If you can do this effectively then you have tremendous opportunities to stand out from the crowd and create as many first meetings as you desire.
The value of the engagement you create should make it a ‘no brainer’ for the prospect to say yes
…because the promise of real value they’ll get from the time they spend with you makes it easy to say yes to.
Just imagine the control you’d have over your business when you can use these concepts to easily create a first meeting with anybody you want to…
…and if you want to know more about exactly how to make this work in your business as well as a detailed walk through of our 6 step prospecting system then I suggest strongly that you see if you are eligible for one of the limited spots on our free Predictable Pipeline Strategy Sessions by clicking here
I know, maybe, you don’t trust me yet.
I know that.
I don’t expect you to trust me until after you register and attend your Predictable Pipeline Strategy Session
…where I’ll be ‘productizing my first meeting’ with you and where I also promise to give you an over delivery of value.
Registering for the Predictable Pipeline Strategy Session is easy
Just click the link below (or above) and enter your name and details..
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With Implementation?
If you want to talk with me personally to see how quickly you can get results with these concepts then click the link below to see if you qualify for a Predictable Pipeline Strategy Call.