Are Your Prospects Qualified For A Face To Face Sales Meeting?
Posted by
Chris Lang on Thu, Aug 19, 2023 @ 02:17 PM
In the world of sales nothing is more exhilarating than face to face meeting. There is something about shaking your prospect's hand, making eye contact, reading body language and having a conversation that gets sales people fired up. I used to go for face to face meetings as much as possible. If one of my inside reps had the right title and they were willing to listen, I was on the first plane, train or automobile to have a chat. I went as far as to ask my reps if they would set me up with only face to face meetings for one month to see how it worked out. I turned down the level of qualification and told them to send me packing if they found the right title within a target list
After a couple of weeks of my team banging the phone my calendar was jammed. I had meetings with high level executives from companies all over the country. I was pumped. I went out and bought some new travel gear. I purchased loafers instead of shoes that tie so that I could effortlessly flip off my shoes and breeze through airport security. I got a beautiful new electric razor so that I could give myself a quick shave while driving my rental car to a meeting. New ties, new sun glasses, cuff links and of course one bad mamma jamma of a brief case. This was one of those cases that must have been made out alien skins it was so expensive. I was going to look good for these meetings and I had better sell my butt off because I just dropped a lot of money on clothing and accessories.
Over the course of the month I ran sales meetings in every major city on the eastern seaboard. I then traveled across the country to spots in Texas, Detroit, Vegas, Phoenix and L.A. I met a lot of great people in these meetings and had way too many steak and wine dinners with "potential clients". Aside from getting a little run down there was one major issue; I wasn't closing anything. I thought for sure that the face to face would allow me to get in front of people and do what I was born to do....sell them on my offering. My pitch was refined, we had a great offering and for the love of god look at my brief case! How could people not buy?
The answer was simple. They weren't qualified to. They were in a long term contract with a competitor, they had no budget to spend, they weren't a fit for us, they didn't believe in our model and I'm pretty sure that some just wanted to get a free steak. On top of this, I am less productive when I travel. In the time it takes me to fly to L.A. for a meeting, I can run 4 discovery calls from my office. In the sales numbers game the formula is simple: the more qualified people you talk to, the more chances you have to sell. The hours I spent drinking half soda cans at 20 thousand feet prohibited me from reaching more people. On top of it all, the money the company spent on hotels, airfares and dinners could have fueled a marketing campaign that would have brought prospects right to my door.
I still love to have face to face meetings. But in my experience there is no way that you can form a predictable sales forecast when meeting with unqualified prospects. That stays the same whether they are in the same room as you or on a phone thousands of miles away. Let your inside team fully qualify your prospects before you go out to see them. If the prospects are serious buyers they will appreciate that your team is doing their due diligence to make sure there is potential and that no one's time is being wasted. In addition the company will save money and possibly make more money than they would have as you will be in the office and able to talk to more prospects on the phone. Maybe you can even find time to make some cold calls yourself!
Happy Hunting...