B2B-Sale: a Key Meeting (Part 3/4)

We have just discussed, how to get ready for the meeting with the client, and talked about the presentation.

Today we shall speak about perhaps the most complicated part of the sale – the key meeting.

Take the Leading Position

B2B-clients will prefer the work with the contractor, who will manage the process, independently take decisions and anticipate problems. So begin to moderate softly your meeting.
Describe the situation and its development: what change you offer, what conclusions you have done from the brief and calls with the customer. Tell him how long your meeting will last, what questions you will arouse and what result you must come to. This will help people to relax.
It's important: the leading position does not mean that you must stand stretching your legs broadly. It is supposed that your client feels safe at your meeting.

Go to the Meeting to Explain, Not to Sell

The key meeting is the place where you help your client to understand your offer better: the details of the project, the creative strategy, the plan of corporate education.

Remember, you have already created the offer, that will sell itself, it's necessary only to help to understand it. You must be a facilitator a little, a psychologist a bit, and tune yourself to help in the solution of the customer's problem. This is a pleasant role, it gives confidence and inspires trust.

To proper analyze your customer's problem, use these tools.

Make Sure, that any Part of the Communications Brings Obvious Sense

It's necessary to understand, why you tell the client about yourself, your cases, your team. If there is no obvious sense – don't tell. You should discuss only the most important things in the nearest future at the key meeting.

Some ideas are better to highlight with the illustrating case, but not to show the cemetery of logotypes of your clients and partners. Or, instead of diplomas and rewards, received by the company for the last period, to show what unique skills the command participants have.

The main idea is: to make proper accents and give a relevant example, but not to lure with a numerous number of logotypes and offices all over the world. Erase all the slides, that are not worth taking into consideration. Personificate the presentation and concentrate all the information on the targets of the concrete customer.

Explain, When Your Partner May Put Questions

There are two strategies of the work with the interlocutors' questions: you may say, that you'll answer all the questions right at the presentation, or ask the audience to write them down and put them at the end.

If you prefer dynamic communication and feel confident, give them a possibility to put questions at any moment. However, I don't recommend this way very much. During the presentation the listener has only a part of information, and finally – the more complete picture, so the questions in the end will be deeper. And, if the meeting is online, it will be complicated to interrupt you tactfully, especially when the presentation is on the screen, not in the windows of interlocutors.

Put Counter Questions

In their questions people often reflect their doubts: in your competence, in the ability to implement a large-scale project, to analyze the risks realistically. It's important to catch these doubts and ask directly if there is any problem that you felt – and to give the information, that will close the question. This meeting is your chance to examine quickly the contradictions of the kind or to neglect them as unnecessary. In the correspondence, if no meeting occurs after the presentation, these doubts may not be discussed at all and then become fatal for the transaction.
It's important: try to discuss with the client all the doubts that you will find. If the interlocutor still has unspoken and unsolved problems, he may reject your offer because you "have not convinced", "fifty-fifty", "but the others were more transparent".

Don't Argue about the Details

Many tiny contradictions in different parts of the project mean, that somewhere before you didn't reach an agreement on the joint work. If you feel misunderstanding, return to the targets and reasons of your offers.

In the End of the Meeting Make a Summary, as at the Beginning

Repeat the main theses of the meeting, recollect the basic agreements and say once more, what steps every partner must undertake. A short summary will create a sensation of the completeness of the meeting, fulfilled target, transparency of the achieved decision.

If you are afraid of losing an important client because of the problems at the key meeting, our trainers will help to get ready for it!

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