6 things to get right at the start of a sales visit

Your sales team have scheduled meetings with your key prospects and customers. They have improved their chances of a successful sales call by preparing fully in advance. What should they do next? How do your salespeople ensure that all the effort they’ve put into their preparation and planning doesn’t go to waste?

Here are the 6 things we recommend your sales team consider.

1. Be Prepared

People tend to make impressions very quickly and sometimes without justification. After all, this might be the first time your salesperson has met with this customer. As they say, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression and this is certainly the case in sales. There are things that they can control - arriving on time, taking pride in their appearance, bring the right equipment and making sure that it’s all working correctly. Above all they should listen attentively, be polite and well mannered. Make sure that your team are memorable for the right reasons!

2. Build a Rapport

At the beginning of the call, your sales team need to find a way to build rapport with the customer. They can do this by showing empathy and by building trust. People will want to do work with your business if your salespeople listen to their problems and help support them. It is the responsibility of your sales personnel to uncover what their issues are and work in close collaboration to solve their challenges. We will cover empathy and trust in more detail in future blogs.

3. Highlight Benefits of the Visit for the Prospect

Remember that time is precious for the decision-makers and influencers that they will be meeting. Your team need to make them feel that the meeting is relevant and worth them being there. It must equally be beneficial, so they see the value in attending. If not, they may be inclined to cut the meeting short before everything is discussed. So, the agenda should always be about what you can do for them. How can you make their life easier? After all, your customers will have their own KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to meet. These will undoubtedly be, amongst other things, reducing costs, improving quality, on-time delivery performance etc. They may also have technical challenges that need to be met.

4. Go Over and Agree the Agenda

As we discussed in our blog on sales call preparation, we would always advise that your sales team agree an agenda with the customer in advance of the call making sure that the key customer benefits are included. It makes sense to go over this agenda at the start of the meeting to emphasise its purpose as to what will be covered and asking if there’s any other objectives the customer would like to add.

5. Encourage Participation

We would then suggest that your salespeople encourage the customer to partake in the discussion as soon as possible. They should do most of the talking. In time, using a collaborative approach, your aim should be to build relationships and work towards ongoing, long-term mutually beneficial partnerships. You should never be interested in quick wins that come at a cost of potentially eroding trust and lost business.

6. Take Minutes

It is always beneficial to take minutes during the meeting and to ensure that any actions are recorded along with who will be responsible for actioning them and by when. This ensures that everything is kept on track and most importantly that promises are kept, thus consolidating the relationship of on-going trust and support with the customer.