Like King Midas, as I was told, everything he touched turned to gold.
- Joseph Simmons and Daryl McDaniels
"If I could just get a meeting with my target prospects I am certain I could close five (or six or eight) out of every ten."
How many of you think the same thing? You know that when you get in front of the prospect you can wow them. Every time a lead comes into the firm and you go on the sales meeting, it's a slam dunk. Made-in-the-shade. Can of corn. You know you'll get the gig.
Let's assume you set a meeting with someone you believe will be a good prospect for your services. It's not from a referral - they neither know you nor have they heard of you beforehand. Thus there is no transferred trust as when you are referred in. It's also not from a client who's sought you out, thus there's no hot need for your services. You targeted them, and you asked them for a meeting.
You use an outside vendor to secure the meeting or you have someone in-house who gets you in the door. Either way your lead generator sends you an email telling you when and where the meeting is. You drive off to the prospect as confident as ever
and come back two hours later with a sinking feeling: you've wasted your time.
Your first thought is that your cold caller sent you on mission impossible. Yet, that might not be the case. Often you have the power to generate success from cold meetings, but you have to take responsibility for that success.
If you're looking for better success from cold meetings, consider the following initiatives:
Target carefully - Before you ask anyone to get you a meeting, be specific about with whom you want to talk. What titles? What industries? What buying influence? What geography? What companies? What budget? Unlike when you receive an incoming lead and you can't necessarily control any of this, when you reach out, you have the power, and the responsibility, to target as precisely as possible. If the person sitting across from you is the right profile, you have a chance. If they're not the right profile, all the skills in the world on your end won't yield a new client.
Research your prospect - A little bit of knowledge is a good thing. A big bit of knowledge is powerful. To give yourself the best chance for a successful meeting, find out as much as you can about the prospect: his industry, his company, his needs, his focus. Everyone wants to know that you have taken the time to learn about what's going on in their world.
Websites and other research mechanisms make it easy to research your prospect. There is no excuse not to be knowledgeable about the people sitting on the other side of the table.
Adjust your expectations - All too often service professionals go into a cold meeting expecting the ultimate - an immediate sale. If they do not get the sale from that first meeting, they consider the entire exercise a waste of time and effort. As a result, they do not plan to succeed over the long-term
and thus they fail.
Know that before you set foot in the door your objective is to start the process of building trust and confidence. If you do it well, eventually the prospect will feel comfortable about picking you as his trusted advisor. If it happens in the first meeting
great, but more likely the outcome of the first meeting will be an initial connection and a scheduled next conversation.
Articulate your value - What value ...
