Sales Meeting Prep: What Everyone Gets Wrong
Notes
Sales Meeting Prep – Are You Doing It Right?
In this episode of The Slow Pitch, we’re diving deep into a topic that can make or break your sales success: Sales Meeting Prep. While many sales professionals think they have a solid meeting prep routine, the truth is, most are making critical errors that could be costing them sales. Today, I’m breaking down the most common mistakes and sharing my 13-step process to prep for sales meetings that ensure you’re ready for anything that may come up in the sales meeting.
Don’t Assume—Verify Everything
One of the biggest pitfalls in sales meeting prep is making assumptions without verifying the details. It’s easy to assume that the person who scheduled the meeting is the decision-maker or that you know their pain points based on past interactions. These assumptions can lead to missed opportunities or even lost sales…and you won’t even know why it happened.
Take the time to thoroughly research your prospect. Use LinkedIn to confirm their role, check for mutual connections who might provide insights, and ensure that you’re speaking to the right person. Remember, the goal is to verify, not assume.
Use a Planning Sheet for Consistency
Solid meeting prep isn’t just about gathering information—it’s about being consistent. I’ve developed a meeting prep planning sheet that I use before every sales meeting, and it’s become an invaluable tool in my sales process. This sheet makes sure I cover all my critical questions before walking into a meeting…everything from understanding the prospect’s DISC profile to identifying whether they’re a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner. These insights allow me to tailor my approach to resonate with them, increasing the likelihood of a successful outcome. This worksheet is available for download below.
Research: The Key to Success
Every successful sales meeting starts with in-depth research. This isn’t just about knowing who you’re meeting with—it’s about understanding their organization, their challenges, and their goals. Before each meeting, I make it a point to connect with any mutual LinkedIn connections to gather additional insights. This step not only prepares me for the conversation but also helps in building rapport during the meeting. Knowing what makes your prospect tick is half the battle.
Use Meeting Prep to Ask the Right Questions
Your research should lead you to ask the right questions. In this episode, I share some of the key questions I prepare for every meeting, such as, “Why did you call us?” and “What do you hope we can achieve together?” These questions are designed to uncover the prospect’s true needs, the scope of the project, and their budget. They also help you determine whether the person you’re speaking with is the decision-maker or if others need to be involved…and I share how to find out and how to add them to the meeting.
Key Sales Meeting Prep: Understanding Their Pains
During the meeting prep, I like to try to guess what their pains are. Sounds strange, but if you put yourself into their shoes, you might be able to figure out what questions they will have. It’s a little surprising when you get several pains right and all you’re doing in the meeting is verifying what you thought. It changes the dynamics of the meeting. BUT, one word of caution, you should only have the knowledge in your head… you must make them tell you and explain why it’s a problem.
Once the meeting is underway, the focus shifts to identifying and verifying the prospect’s pain points. This is where the real value of your preparation shines. By asking targeted questions, you can uncover the underlying issues driving the prospect’s decision-making process. This not only positions you as someone who understands their problems but also helps in guiding the conversation towards a solution that aligns with their needs.
Budget: The Unspoken Key
Discussing budget can be tricky, but it’s a crucial part of the process. You can ask directly about budget constraints related to time, resources, and previous similar projects. Understanding their budgetary process and constraints allows you to propose solutions that are not only effective but also feasible within their financial parameters.
Final Checklist Before the Pitch
Before you wrap up the meeting, use your planning sheet to ensure you’ve covered all critical points. This includes confirming that the decision-makers are in the room, that you’ve addressed their pain points, and that the budget discussion has provided enough clarity for you to proceed. If everything checks out, you’re ready to move forward with a proposal or next steps. Be clear with them…and make them be clear with you about what next steps are for the both of you.
Conclusion
Preparing for a sales meeting isn’t just about showing up with a few notes. It’s about having a detailed, consistent process that eliminates assumptions, leverages research, and positions you to close the deal. The next time you’re gearing up for a meeting, remember: slow down, prepare thoroughly, and you’ll close more.
Thanks for tuning in to The Slow Pitch. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a colleague who could benefit from sharpening their sales meeting prep. And as always, if you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out—we’re here to help you close more deals by slowing down and preparing better.
Related Content:
How To Sell To A High D Personality – 3 Powerful Uses of DiSC Profiles in Sales
How to Sell to a High I Personality – Using DiSC Profiles in Sales
How to Sell To an “S” Personality – DiSC in Sales
Sales and DISC – The C Personality
Selling to Kinesthetic Learners – Communicating with Feelings
Selling to Visual Learners (What You Must Do to Sell To Them)
Selling to Auditory Learners – #1 Sound Advice
Want to learn even more about DiSC?
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Music: "Clydesdale Funk" by Cast of Characters, written by: Dustin Ransom.
The Episode
Rob 00:08
Welcome back everybody to The Slow Pitch. Today we’re talking a little bit about sales meeting prep. I know we’ve talked a little bit about it before but let me kind of walk you through some of the things that I do to get ready for an important meeting. Let’s get started.
Rob 00:24
You’re listening to The Slow Pitch Podcast, a podcast about selling less and closing more.
Rob 00:31
Alright, so we are getting ready for an important meeting. We have one that’s coming up, and now, what like do you do? You just think to yourself, okay, I got to do all these things or do you have a process to that? If you don’t have a process, let me help you with with one that can help you out here a little bit.
Rob 00:48
If you don’t have a process, let me give you one. And let’s keep it very simple. So, here’s what I try to do. I’ve got a sheet that I’m going to put into the show notes so that you can download it if you want to use it. But basically, what you’re doing is you are listing off all the different things that you should be doing to be consistent before a next meeting.
Rob 00:48
So for example, number one, who are you meeting with? Now this could be the person that called you in, but that person that called you in, are they exactly the right person to make all the decisions. They may have the right to say no, but do they have the right to say yes?
Rob 01:27
I was talking to somebody not too long ago, and they had a meeting with somebody who they later on determined that that person was only collecting information, asking all the questions and doing all the activities that looked like they were going to be able to make the decision, but they actually, in fact, could not make the decision.
Rob 01:45
That is something you want to know before your meeting. So, in this case, when I had this meeting coming up, I know that the person that I’m talking to is highly likely that they’re going to be the person that is going to make the decision, because their profile on LinkedIn says they are the development director.
So director typically means is somebody that’s pretty high up right now, when I look at their corporate structure, there’s really not many people above them, so pretty likely that they’re in charge of their division, they are probably going to be okay to make decisions for their own profit and loss statement and so forth.
Rob 02:22
So based on that, I’m saying that they’re probably going to be the only one. But if I found out that there was somebody above them or parallel to them on the chart that should be there, I might invite them before I get to that meeting to see if they could make it there. Or I would ask the person that I’m supposed to be meeting with, should we invite this person? And this person, by name, would be the way that they would go. You know, that’s probably a good idea. We should probably invite them. That’s usually how that works.
Rob 02:49
Next on that form is, what is their DISC profile? So, I just have D, I, S, C. So, if you don’t know much about DiSC and you’re not sure which one these this person is, do a little research. I have an episode that’s just specifically about each of those personality profiles.
It would behoove you to know those profiles, because the questions in your approach will match their profile so that they make sure that they feel like they’re being heard and understood. So, it’s really important to understand those I would designate, are they a high D? Are they at I? Are they a C, are they at S?
Rob 03:22
That said, the next one is, are they a visual kind of a person? Are they an auditory kind of a person or a kinesthetic kind of a person? Those three are the main, primary ways of people observing the world or going through the world, right? So I’ll start in this meeting, start to figure out whether or not they’re a visual person, an auditory person or a kinesthetic person, by the questions that I ask and their responses based on that information.
I would mark that down if you don’t know what a visual person or an auditory person and so on are, I have three different episodes, one for each one of those. So go back to those and listen to them. They will be very helpful.
Rob 03:23
The other question I ask myself on this form is, Have I met this person before? If I have, that’s important. If I haven’t, that’s also important. If I haven’t met them, do I have, as the next question is, do I have a LinkedIn connection? So I go through that question, I start researching, who are my LinkedIn connections?
If I don’t have any LinkedIn connections, that’s one thing, but if I do, I might go and communicate with those people that I’m connected, that they’re connected to, and ask them if they have any information about that person, or if they can tell me a little bit about that information. Because, what they might be able to tell me is, what kind of a DISC profile they are based on the questions that I’m going to ask that person. I might be able to find out how they make decisions. I might be able to find out how they’ve dealt with this person in terms of their business.
Rob 03:33
You should be pretty prepared when you walk in that meeting to know whether or not this is going to go well or not. You’ll feel pretty comfortable. And I gotta tell you, every time I do this, it always makes me feel more comfortable walking in knowing all the information that I can and then knowing what questions and what direction I want to go in for that meeting.
Rob 03:33
So I hope that helps if you have any questions of your own, or if you know somebody that’s going into meetings and doesn’t seem to be very prepared, send this episode to them. Give this a share, have them listen to it and ask them what they think. I would love your feedback. If you have any questions, reach out, and we’ll cover those questions until next time, remember slow down and close more.
Rob 03:35
The next thing on this checklist is, how much impact does this person have on the deal? If they are the main person that’s going to make all the decisions, or the final decision, then I would say that they’re pretty high. If they have input and ability to make some changes, then there may be medium. And if they have very little input, but they have some input in terms of information that might be helpful. They may have low impact on the deal, but they maybe have, you know, rather high impact on information gathering. And I’ll mark that in there.
Rob 04:28
Then, the next question is, what is the relationship that I might have with this person? So are they a friend? Are they an enemy? Are they primarily neutral? And those three are kind of the main buckets.
And typically, most people are neutral, if you haven’t really met them before, but if they are a person that’s in this group of people that you might be meeting with, there might be somebody that’s connected to another person that does what you do on LinkedIn, they potentially could be an enemy, meaning they would be rooting for their friend or the person that they know that does the same thing that you do, right?
So that’s something you might want to know.
Rob 05:44
The next thing that you might do is say, what are the things or the reasons why somebody would be communicating and connecting with me? Why did they reach out? Now is the time to start to write down why you think they reached out to you. And if you can figure those things out ahead of time, that’s helpful. If you don’t know that, then you’re just guessing, but you’re trying to verify that during the meeting, it really prompts you to ask the questions, to find out, hey, why did you call us?
Rob 06:07
So when I go to the next section, really, it’s, what are my goals here? What am I trying to do? So typically, what I write in that box, although not always, is I’m trying to identify what their need is. I’m trying to identify what the scope of the project is what they’re trying to get accomplished, and is this a good person that I should be speaking to? Are they the right decision maker? And I’m also trying to figure out what is their budget, so I might put those goals in there, and then I have a section that’s called key questions to ask.
Rob 06:33
So questions that I might write in there are something like, you know, why did you call us? Did anybody give you a suggestion? So what do you hope we can do other kind of pertinent information that you need to find out? In other words, who are some of the decision makers, and how long is this project going to take? Or what do you expect this project to take? When do you think you’re going to make some decisions?
Rob 06:53
These are some key questions that I want to make sure that I ask so that I can get the answers that I need and understand what’s happening. And then I’m going to write down some of the questions I think they’re going to ask so they might they might say, you know, hey, I want to see some examples, or I want to make some connections, or I want to see your references. So you might write some of those common questions down and make sure you have answers for those.
Rob 07:12
The next section is probably the most critical. These are all things you can do before now, during the meeting, I bring the sheet with me, and in the meeting, I might ask the questions that bring me to their pain points. So this section is potential pains. I might write in here some of the things I think are their pains. And then I’ve had to verify or ask questions to verify that. And so then I write in these, these sections here, what the actual pains are.
Rob 07:35
Once I get going. I might also write down some of the issues that are going on, the relationships between whatever people in the organization, if I can determine that, I might write down some of the business issues that are happening, that are causing issues or pain that might be contributing to wanting to why they’re wanting to talk to me. So those are the little sidebar things that I’m writing on here.
Rob 07:55
The next section is about budget. And budget is really the big one that you want to know, right? But you can’t ask those directly. So you need to talk in terms of money. You need to talk in terms of time or resources, all those things that really feed into whether or not they’re going to make a budget that’s large enough, small enough, what have you to be able to get that job?
Rob 08:15
And in this section, you’re going to kind of work through what is their process? How do they set their budget when they’ve worked on stuff like this before, similar to this. Meaning, if I’m in the marketing world, there’s another marketing project that maybe that they’ve done before, maybe not exactly the same. But how did you guys determine the budget?
And sometimes they say, well, we bid it out, you know, got three bids. Sometimes they say, well, we have no idea, but we took some guesses based on the fact that it took this much to create this, and this much to create that we figure it should be close to this, and maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, but at least you know there’s some of their process and their thinking behind how they got there.
Rob 08:51
I also write down who are my LinkedIn connections. I know up above or earlier we talked a little bit about who am I connected to. I write those down very specifically so that during that budget section or those decision making sections, I start to remember that, oh yeah, this person that they’re connected to also does what I do, and so maybe that’s where they got their ideas. So it kind of jogs my memory about that.
Rob 09:13
The next section is really just a little, a little piece of information that’s like, who, what, when, where, why and how, basically, anything that’s kind of cleanup questions that have to do with any of those basic reporter questions, it helps me understand the who’s what, where’s, whys and hows, all of that stuff that you need to ask. It just jogs my memory.
Hey, there’s something that’s come up, then in my conversation with them, I can dig deeper into that. So it kind of jogs my memory for that now that I get through this conversation with somebody, and again, this can happen over a couple meetings, or it can happen in one meeting.
Rob 09:48
The section where it’s like, okay, well, I know all the pains. I know that it makes sense. I know the budget, I know the decision makers are in the room, or I know who was involved.
Rob 09:58
So the next question is, is, do I have the needed expertise, and do I have the interest? Is this a fit? And the next question is, is really into the yes or no? Is this within a budget that I think is a reasonable for me? If it’s a yes or no, okay, do I know the budget makers, or who the people are setting the budget and who are the decision makers? Maybe they’re the same. Do I know them?
Is it a yes or no? Did I set up an agreement in the beginning of how things are going to go, meaning, have I set it up so that we have the conversation? Say, Hey, you know what? We get to this point, I may have to ask you to make a decision. And if we get to that point, and you’re not really sure, I’m not going to be really in that position where I can help you anymore.
Rob 10:38
Are you comfortable making a final decision when it’s that time I’ve made some commitments to them, that I’m going to do what I can to make a commitment for them, that I’m asking them to do the same thing back. And we talked about that before in another episode as well. So that’s a yes or no. Did I set that expectation?
Rob 10:53
And the last really check mark is, really, are they qualified? Are they qualified? Have I done all the qualification pieces up above and in the conversation, do I feel like, okay, they’re serious. They know what they need, and they I know that they’re gonna be able to make some decisions, yes or no. If all of that is true, then I get a check mark that says I can proceed to writing out an estimate or proceed to having another presentation for them that says, here’s what we’re going to do, and for this price, until then, I’m not making any presentations, right?
Rob 11:26
I wait until I have all those things in line before I make any sort of presentation. And then below that, you’ll see that I have a bunch of other questions, and some of them are more important than others during different meetings. So one time, the question of, you know, how do you feel that this represents you? Or how do you feel that this does for you?
Might not fit as well as another question on this list, but it really helps you make sure that you have some of your pain questions listed out, but also, more specifically, helping you decide what questions you need to ask when it’s time. It helps you just kind of make sure that you’re not forgetting anything.
Rob 12:01
They’re general in nature, those questions, and they could be adjusted and changed based on the client who you’re talking to. Just keep that in mind. You have to adjust it accordingly.
Rob 12:10
And then finally, there’s the last little section, any additional notes? So in your process of prepping, did you find that there was anything that was really important you needed to make sure that was listed, asked questions, all those kinds of things. You write that down in that section, and then you make sure that you cover that once you’ve completed all that.
Rob 12:27
Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales? Call or text your question at (608) 708-SLOW. That’s (608) 708-7569. Or you can email them to Questions@theslowpitch.com.Slow Down and Close More.
Rob 13:31
You Thanks, as always, for listening today. If you like this podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at The Slow Pitch. We were mixed today, as always, by Johnny Polakis, and we were produced by High Gravity Studios. Music credits and other notes are in the show notes section on TheSlowPich.com and we’ll be back with another episode soon.