In order to close a prospect in a sales engagement meeting, it’s a given that your potential client sees you as an expert and an authority within the industry. To do that, you need to be prepared well in advance of the meeting. 

We’ve previously discussed why having a consistent sales meeting framework is beneficial for your professional practice. Despite the resistance that you might feel when conducting sales engagement, it can–and will–help you convert prospects into loyal clients because of how you pay attention to your prospects’ concerns and engage with them authentically.

In short, you give them a reason to trust you, as well as your products and services. 

However, a sales engagement meeting can’t be an unstructured conversation. You need to prepare accordingly and lay out the meeting to address every pain point in an organised manner. Having a list of things you need to tackle and discuss will help you best collect the information you need from your prospect. 

Sales training, when you’ve trained yourself and your staff to do it efficiently and with genuine care for the client, isn’t supposed to be full of aggressive sales tactics and pandering. It must be done with sincerity and an authentic desire to address your client’s needs and wants effectively.

Sales engagement meetings should be productive and well-laid-out so you can pinpoint solutions for your prospect with confidence. 

What you need to prepare before the meeting

Before you meet with your potential client, you need to do the following: 

• Research – Take some time to find background information on your prospective client and their business. Try to find key particulars that can better guide your line of questioning and the rest of the sales engagement process. Get to know them a bit better through public profiles like LinkedIn or through their website/s. 
• Practice scripts – Any and all spiels, questions and scripts need to be run through and spoken out loud so you sound confident and clear. You need to make sure you don’t stumble on any of your words so you come off as professional. Preparing the room and your appearance are also good ideas–keeping things tidy and organised will make you look presentable. 
• Centre yourself – Give yourself a few minutes beforehand to centre yourself to get into the mindset you need to. Rushing into these meetings may cause stress. Make sure you’re calm and collected before your prospect even enters the room (or online session) so they feel just as comfortable as you. 

Our 7-step process to a successful sales engagement meeting

You need your sales engagement meeting to be smooth and efficient so you can maximise your chances of converting your prospects into a client. During your meeting, you need to follow these seven steps to successfully engage with your prospect. 

1. Building rapport

This is a step that many take for granted when planning their sales engagement meetings. Not only does it give you a foundation to relate with your prospect and make them feel comfortable, it gives you an opportunity to establish trust right away.

Trust is something you need in order to assure your potential clients you aren’t just another slimy salesperson trying to put their foot in the door. 

Here are a few tips around building rapport with your prospect:

• Understand and acknowledge how they’re feeling – Take some time to figure out what they’re feeling and what’s on their mind. Are they anxious about the meeting? Apprehensive? Excited? Make sure you validate their feelings and try to ease their worries. 

• Try to connect by asking about them – Ask them about their weekend, their hobbies or their family. What are they interested in outside of work? Find connections and let that be how you win their trust. 

• Make sure your body language comes across friendly – Maintaining eye contact and open body language can help them relax and associate you with friendliness and see you as someone who has your best interest at heart.

2. Agenda-setting

Not only is a well-laid-out agenda impressive because you come across as professional and with clear expectations, it sets the tone of the meeting so your prospects feel they’re in good hands.

By establishing what you want out of the meeting and how you can help their business, they’ll be comforted by your confidence, your professionalism and your expertise in the field. 

You’ll also find out what your prospect wants out of the meeting, guiding your conversation.

3. Positioning the sale

You need to make sure your potential client knows more about you and your business so they feel you’re in an authoritative position. This is what’s more commonly known as the “elevator pitch.” 

When you talk about your business, you need to figure out whether or not you were referred by another client who’s already told the prospect about your business or if they know little to nothing about you and are coming in fresh.

Doing this allows you to figure out how to best position yourself. Do you need to go in-depth or just touch on key points? A potential client that knows a bit about you are considered “presold” and have already dipped their toes in. One that doesn’t know anything about you isn’t presold and you need to make them more comfortable with your business. 

4. Diagnosing their problem/s

This is where you need to start identifying your potential client’s pain points and what they want addressed for themselves or their business. Diagnosing their situation is vital in order to capitalise on the trust they’ve put into you. 

You’ll be spending most of your time on this step, so be patient with both yourself and your prospect when you outline what they want and need from you. Go through each pain point extensively to find out how it’s troubling them or their business, listen actively and take notes so you can revisit points later on. 

You need to understand the facts, feelings and figures around their current situation and their ideal outcome.

There are two main phases to this step:

• Understanding their facts and feelings around their current situation and 
• What their desired position is or what their goal is?

Ask questions and probe further into why there are problems and learn more about what they’re struggling with, leading to a deepening of your rapport. 

You need to make sure that you:

• Talk as little as possible and listen well without trying to solve their problems right away
• Ask open-ended questions
• Transition conversations from thinking-based to more emotive-based

5. Remedying their problem/s

After actively listening to their pain points and problems, you need to show how you have the authority to help your potential client best. It’s time for you to show why you’re the expert and are best positioned to help them out. 

Instead of focusing on the benefits of your product or service–a common mistake–you need to touch on their feelings and concerns individually to show you listened and you sincerely want to solve their problems. It’s important to stay human and show you empathise with them rather than start to prattle on about how your product or service is the best solution ever.

Going through their emotions helps strengthen that trust you’ve already established because you show you care for them not as simply a sale, but as people who want something solved–just like everyone else.

This step is going to vary from person to person so you need to think on your feet and demonstrate that you have the skills and expertise to solve their problems. 

Of course, you don’t want to give them every solution–that’ll just be giving them the answers for free. You need them to buy in, and doing that requires you to sell them the concept of being a client. Once they feel they need your products or services and want to know more about how you can solve their problems, you can start walking them through what you offer and what product or service appeals to them. 

6. The offer

After you’ve successfully walked them through  in the prior step, it’s now time to outline the financial investment or cost. Solution-selling works best once you’ve shown genuine interest and empathy towards your prospect. 

However, you need to make sure you’re reading the situation carefully. Can you gauge whether or not they’re completely sold on your products or services? Do they seem keen or have they explicitly said they’re ready to take on the next step?

Once you’ve pushed them past the buyer’s resistance stage towards the buyer’s acceptance stage, you can lock in their trust and start the transition from prospect to loyal client. Start talking about the onboarding process and payment terms here, reassuring them that you’re just as committed to their issues as they are.

7. Gaining commitment 

This is often defined as “closing” the sale, the step where your prospect agrees with and signs with you and becomes a full-fledged client. 

Many people think that this is the step where the sale is either “won” or “lost,” but that’s not the case. Losing or winning the sale comes much earlier on, and this is just where your prospect makes a decision depending on their level of comfort. 

Gaining commitment is when your prospect decides to officially get on board or agree to move forward in some facit. You start to give them instructions moving forward no longer as prospect, but as a future client. 

This often looks like sending a proposal, signing a document or meeting up on a different date looking to implement solutions rather than having another sales engagement meeting.

You need to walk your prospect through these seven steps to maximise your chances of a successful engagement. Your success is hinged on how good you are at selling your business and how you view your prospect as more than just a sale, but as someone who genuinely wants solutions. Your empathy will go a long way and not only lead to a new client, but a new relationship to nurture.

If you want to learn more about how we can work with your team to help them engage your prospects on a personal level and turn them into a new client, give us a call.