FAT-WHYME

His old man had told a joke. The opening of a meeting with a potential customer

What to do in the first five minutes of face to face sales call? Does it take you to make small talk before getting to work, or do they push through and get right to the "real" meeting?

In this article describes how to use those first few moments of inactivity time, often absorbed by walking to the prospect's office, booting a laptop, hang coats, or awaiting a third to arrive. One of the key objectives of a meeting with a new client perspective is to build some relationships. The first five minutes are precious. So let's break the start of the meeting and give some suggestions to make the unstructured time useful.

Personal contact points for monitoring are as useful as business reasons.

The soul of sales meets with new clients, potential. The objective of first meeting is on foot with a list of real reasons – personal and business – to continue the contact. But it is difficult to have a genuine interest in someone if you knows nothing about them. The first five minutes is an opportunity to generate such interest. It would be hard to do, in the middle of a session on that trophy on the shelf superior. It is best to use this time to start to discover more about his client as a person, discover things about themselves that are interesting to you, and disclose interests related to you that might be interesting for them.

Let's look at a couple of different situations and consider how to meet our objectives: to create a connection with a prospective client, to learn something about them that allow personal follow opportunities, and open the door to a genuine interest in each other as people.

Scenario 1: You have some data coming to the meeting, and therefore you can ask about something in which they are interested. The ideal is to enter in a meeting like this with some information. The Internet today offers opportunities to discover the interests of a person must be related to, but are outside, work. If the search becomes something, ask about it.

"I saw your picture with the president and his contribution on behalf of homeless veterans. What how do you support that cause? "

Or better: "I saw his time in Tampa triathlon. You left the bay in the top 20. Impressive. Háblame that! "

These are the best openers of the discussion that climate, or the connection is lost at O'Hare airport. It is better because you are of mutual listening and monitoring opportunities. Depending on the answers there are a myriad of contact points may be a brief talk about a hobby or interest Charity can create. For example, some follow-up ideas that might result from the response to previous questions.

Thinking ahead about the possible topics that you ask before the meeting starts, and while you're listening, note what you learn so you can use that information to create authentic following of the contact points.

Scenario 2: You have no information. Let say a Google search turned up nothing. You have a lot of corporate news at the enterprise level, but no interest on the individual. Here are a couple of options:

Scenario 3: There are no pictures on the wall? Assistant not informed? Questions that all professional staff, and often successful: "How long have you worked here?"

Informal is good. If you can establish a relationship enough that the entire meeting is maintained in this informal conversation space, even better. Keep informal meeting and no formal presentation or Q & A, and the result is often a colloquial dialogue, fluid. Reflects a good first five minutes. One investment banker speaks of a meeting with a client, a CFO of a large financial company. He described this as a virtual CFO "devourer" of vendors.

"I could pick apart a presentation. Any assumptions aggressive, or even worse miscalculation, was quickly revealed and thrown back in the face of the seller is like a pie with vanilla ice cream. Deep, aggressive and strictly no-nonsense, he was the bar by which I measured my preparation for a sales call. One Friday I met him in his office for a scheduled meeting and was, for him, more relaxed than usual. Asked a question about of a story that I thought might affect your business. He agreed that was a concern, and have proposed some ideas I had on the subject. From there, the Conversation flowed. I never once opened my laptop to show him that he had prepared the presentation, standard protocol in our industry. No But in our dialogue we have covered all the items I had in that presentation. We just did it conversational. It was the best meeting and most relationship I had with him. All because I struggled and succeeded, according to an informal meeting. "

Aim for an open dialogue begins light and smoothly goes to work and you will realize that he went to a meeting and a conversation broke out.

The first five minutes is the time to know who your potential customer is a person. See if you share a common interest or vision of the world. simple personal connections can be more influential on whether becomes a potential customer a good product or service fit. Because in a nutshell, people prefer to work with people they like. Know something about someone which is a prerequisite for your company. So use the first five to get information about them and to report on itself, and let lead to a relaxed dialogue.

And remember it's a two way street. Your client has an interest in finding a little about you as well. Therefore, have few possibilities in mind and then let your true natural curiosity out.

Or, you can always tell a joke …

About the Author

Tim Dunne is an innovation and creativity facilitator based in Paris and New York. For sixteen years, Tim has been using structured creativity to help his clients sell better, develop products, build leadership skills and design strategy.

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