Most salespeople completely blow their first newbiz meeting – including you

You land a meeting with a prospect that you’ve been researching for quite some time.  Then you make the same mistake that most sales people make:  you book an hour-long meeting at her office.What’s wrong with that?  Plenty.  The chances of converting that meeting into a sale are quite slim at this point.  So let’s look at the math:

Meeting: 1 hour
Travel to and from: 1 hour
Waiting time (you always want to leave a margin for traffic): 15 minutes
Preparation: 30 minutes

You’ve just invested nearly three hours on a meeting that hasn’t yet been properly qualified.  Big mistake.

Not only that, for every meeting you’ve booked you could have probably booked three if you had asked for 15 minutes instead of an hour.

What can you do in 15 minutes? You’d be surprised – but who says it has to remain a 15-minute meeting if you’re both having fun?

 First, let’s look at the typical office visit:

1. After travel and parking you wait for the prospect, then more waiting.  Even if you politely refuse the coffee in order to not lose more time, she’ll grab a cup.  Fine, you take care of the small chit-chat while you’re walking down that mile-long corridor.
2. Down to 45 minutes, you get to business.  Introductions, etc.  Finally, you have 30 minutes to do your song and dance.

If you don’t get a second meeting, you’ve just blown about three hours.  Ouch!

Now let’s look at the potential behind 15-minute LeanMeetings® for sales executives

1. No travel, no coffee, just a quick call to qualify each other.  Both of you agree this is a good idea before blowing an hour with a total stranger.
   
   
2. With only 15 minutes to work with, you dispense with chit-chat and long introductions and get right down to the business of qualifying each other.
   
   
3. If you’re not a good match, you’ve lost 15 minutes (more likely just 10 if you’re good) – not 3 hours!  Think about it: how many of your first face-to-face meetings get to the next level?  If it’s less than 100% then following this LeanMeetings® method is a no-brainer.  Don’t forget that you’re booking three times as many meetings because you’re only asking for 15 minutes.  Who doesn’t have 15 minutes?
   
   
4. Wait, it gets better.  What if it goes well?  The phone call doesn’t have to end after 15 minutes.  You’ve planned 30 minutes in your calendar – and you’ve got to know that she doesn’t have an 11:15 or an 11:45 meeting right?  So you spend the second half of the call planning a “real” meeting with the right stakeholders attending.  In the end, you get the same amount of “quality time” but with less than 20% of the time investment – never mind the gas and parking savings.
   
   
5. Your next meeting (your first live meeting) has the right people around the table so you book 90 minutes – at her suggestion.  Shazam!