When you think about it, the most valuable time with a customer or prospect is a face-to-face meeting. This affords you and your company to put your best foot forward and to potentially achieve the ultimate goal–winning the order! In order to optimize this opportunity, you must pre-call plan to gain the best result possible.
Many companies today sell in a multi-level channel environment. The reason companies utilize various channels to market is to maximize market coverage and maintain a low cost of sales. Beyond a company’s direct sales force there may be an independent manufacturer’s agent (or ManRep as they are known) and possibly a distributor involved in the sale. Each of these elements in the supply chain has a motivation in closing the sale.
I have found myself, on many occasions, in calls that involved all points of market channels. A sales call might involve the direct salesperson, the ManRep, who identified and qualified the customer/prospect, and the distributor who happens to have a close relationship with the coach or product champion at the customer’s site. This definitely is a situation where pre-call planning is so critical that a meeting is arranged prior to the customer visit.
TEN ISSUES PRE-CALL PLANNING MEETINGS SHOULD COVER
1. What are the objectives for the meeting?
Is it a fact-finding mission? Is it to gain product trial or evaluation? Is it to make a recommendation? Be sure everyone on your team knows the objective.
2. What is the expectation of the meeting?
Are you: beginning to build a strong relationship, obtaining information to construct a recommendation, or getting to the Economic Buyer? It is important to have a reasonable expectation of the meeting’s outcome because every meeting does not end in closing the sale.
3. Who will attend the meeting. What are their respective roles?
Obviously this is a critical point. You’d like everyone involved that can move your product forward whether it is engineering, purchasing, or operations. Ideally, you’d like to know if the Economic Buyer would be in the meeting. Many meetings of this type are with a committee or team, and the Economic Buyer is not present.
4. Who will not be in the meeting?
This is important. For example, if you have a highly technical product, you’d like to extol the features and advantages to someone that recognizes the benefits the product provides to the application. You may want to make sure Engineering is attending.
5. Know the buying styles of the people involved!
This is as critical as the pre-call plan meeting itself. Your team must know the buying styles of the customers attending the meeting. The buying style of an A2 is quite different from that of a D4. If you don’t know the customer’s style, some sources of help could be your coach, the receptionist, or even the customer’s voice mail.
6. What are the roles of your team members?
Each member of your team is there to add value to the meeting. If there will not be discussions regarding logistics at the meeting, then maybe the distributor representative does not need to attend.
7. Who will the lead at the meeting?
It is important that the customer have a focal point to address issues and questions. You need to select a person on your team to be the single point of contact to respond to questions that may not be answered in the meeting.
8. Who will take charge of coordinating the presentation and flow of the meeting?
Typically the lead takes on the responsibility of answering questions directly, or redirecting questions to the person on your team (ManRep or distributor) who can best answer the customers’ concerns. The age-old adage of speaking only when spoken to is very relevant in a situation like this.
9. Have the issues or pain of the customer been identified and a solution considered?
The coach can be a valuable asset to address this situation. The coach may not know all the issues, but certainly can provide areas of concern that the team should be ready to address. The two most effective ways to address a customer’s pain is to demonstrate how your product or service either reduces costs or grows revenue.
10. Is there a plan for the next probable step?
Be prepared to address the most likely next steps such as: a field trial evaluation, a meeting with the Economic Buyer, a plant visit, or providing more data, etc.
