How to get more client meetings
Finding it hard to get prospects to agree to see you? Can’t arrange your quota of weekly client meetings? Follow this trusty tip:
BE LESS BORING
Yes, it’s a sad fact that your potential client is resisting your offer of a face-to-face chinwag because resistance is the most attractive option. You’ve just spent ten minutes talking at him about yourself and are now asking the permission to do the same in a room he can’t escape from.
He’s heard your pitch before from your competition. He’s answered the same questions from shit salesmen all his career. He’d rather rearrange his facial features with a spanner than talk to you over a coffee.
Here’s what gives:
If you call somebody that’s glad to hear from you, not necessarily because they like you, but because you are of interest to them, and you suggest a coffee, they’ll say yes. If they can’t make time for a coffee, they’ll find another time for a beer, or lunch. And they’ll call you to arrange it.
People who find you interesting will want to meet you. This is a universal truth. Your client or prospect doesn’t like the idea of spending time with you, so he won’t meet with you.
He’s not too busy. He doesn’t have another meeting. His calendar isn’t “looking full. He’s just not interested.
Because you’re not interesting enough.
Sort it out.
This is CRM:
Contact relationship management (or, simply put, staying in touch) means that today’s contact has the opportunity to be tomorrow’s buyer.
Your CONTACTS remain at the centre of your world. You need buyers, and you need partners, and you need suppliers.
Your product
+
buyers, partners, suppliers
+
other people you know
=
contacts
=
your business.
Don’t dump non-buying prospects. Keep them warm. You never know.
Stay in touch.
What's the point of cold calling? And feel the fear!
A LinkedIn user asks: Whats the point of cold calling by phone?
Wendy Weiss recommends taking a reality check if you experience “Telephone Terror”
And on the subject of terror, “most salespeople would rather drink a warm cup of sour milk than make a cold call. In terms of fears, cold calling ranks up there with public speaking and death” – via How to make a success of cold calling.
And most of us are afraid of “no”, but Kelley Robertson reminds us that “you need to recognize that every ‘no’ brings you one call closer to making an appointment or landing a sale.”
Sales calls: the proper mindset
Confidence on the phone is 80% of the mountain climbed.
Lushin and Associates remind us that the key to sounding successful is sounding like you don’t need the business (and reference Tommy Boy).
And whatever you do, don’t sound like a salesman. Artificial sales enthusiasm is – artificial.
And Marcus Cauchi, in this video, says that “if you want to get really proficient at selling, you’ve got to behave like you’ve been married for thirty years … to the wrong person.”
