The four pitfalls of Sales meetings
You finish your pitch and the prospect remains silent. They thank you for your time, they say they will contact you for next steps and you go on your way. You never hear back.
Unfortunately this is a common scenario for many sellers like myself. It’s not that people like being mean and wasting your time. In fact, it most probably has nothing to do with who you are.
But… what happened? And how can I make sure it doesn’t happen again?
Let’s go through the four pitfalls of sales teams and what you can do about them:
#1 - You didn’t know what they wanted
Many salespeople think that if they are not pitching, they’re wasting time. I like to think it as follows:
Sales is not just being “on the offensive”. Often, the best sales are defensive.
Preparing for a meeting and bringing that information into the conversation shows care and helps you to build rapport. But what really matters is if you’ve connected what you want to sell with what they need.
In order for you to do this effectively, you need to know what matters to them.
What you can do: start all meetings by asking questions. Take a genuine interest in helping them and only after you can talk about what you can bring. Aim to spend the first 20 minutes of a 60 minute meeting just on this.
#2 - You showed too many things.
This is the classic case of having too many ingredients in the same dish. Every time you add something to the story, you are taking away from each other that was there first.
The paradox of choice suggests that an abundance of options actually requires more effort to choose and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice.
Get it?
Give your customers 10 options, they will pick none.
Give them 2 and the discussion you will have is: which one?
What you can do: you need to have a clear message or story you want to deliver so that message gets to the other side (as whole as it can get). When you’re preparing your next pitch, start by creating an outline. Then find data that supports it (not trying to tell a good story with all the data you have).
#3 - You didn’t have a conversation.
Nobody likes being talked at. People like being talked with.
That means starting with questions (as explained in #1)
It also means engaging throughout your pitch.
What you can do: you need to create some engagement moments during your story. Perhaps a moment to pause and ask what they think so far. A moment where you ask them to “raise your hands if…”. Or even inviting a person at the meeting to share their experience. Anything counts as long as you’re not doing the talking.
#4 - You didn’t close the meeting
Oh, have I been guilty of this. I prepared my deck for weeks, tweaked every single line, formatted every letter and corrected the size of all titles. I get to the meeting and then I have one goal in mind: get to the end of the deck so this potential customer sees it all.
Big mistake. Getting to the end of the presentation should not be the goal. As we saw in #3, you can’t really have a conversation if you’re rapping through your slides, right?
The other problem is that you will have no clear action items nor time left to discuss what the customer thought was relevant and what they will do about it.
What you can do: don’t leave the meeting without knowing (a) who’s doing what and (b) by when. Throughout the meeting, close interventions with action items, owners and then follow up. This will create more accountability. What else? Book your next meeting so you have a deadline for everything.
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