The previous blog had listed the activities which shouldn’t be the goals you go after. This blog will focus on the activities that should be your priority. If you do one or more of these correctly, then you can feel happy of going through with the meeting and getting a step closer to the sale.
The points listed below, if accomplished, will also demonstrate that the prospect has a strong intention in closing this transaction with your company. So what are they?
1. Get the prospect to share a sample of their data
This can sound simple but in reality is a very difficult task. But if you succeed in getting a sample data from your prospect, be rest assured that you are a very strong contender for the project to be won by you. No company will be willing to compromise their data to a vendor they are not serious about. This rarely happens in the first meeting, so don’t fret if you haven’t met your desired objective straight away. With a good team and consistent work in giving your prospect confidence in your abilities, will surely get you there. If even after many meetings you are not able to get there, you might well be on your way to lost time in which case you should evaluate if it’s worth pursuing the opportunity further. There are other aspects that you need to be cognizant of when making this decision.
2. Set up a cadence meeting with a pre-planned schedule
While a sales professional is trying to optimize his/her time by not putting it in places where there is hardly any interest, the same is the case with the prospect too. They wouldn’t want to get on calls with vendors where they don’t believe there is a future. That’s the reason getting a meeting in itself is considered as a step towards the right direction. So when you ask the prospect if they are willing to setup scheduled calls at regular intervals, there will be two different answers. If the answer is yes, that’s a sign that you are trusted by the prospect and they are willing to spend the extra time with you in the hopes that there will be a working relationship in the future. Well the answer could be a maybe or no too, in which case you know that you are not quite there in terms of your solution being a final contender for their ask. Be at it until the answer turns to a ‘Yes’. And if after a lot of persistence, you still don’t get there, maybe its time to move on, saving time for both you and the prospect.
3. Expand the reach of your prospective audience
The next two points are crucial if you want to build your network to go beyond the current set of prospects you are meeting. There are a couple of outcomes that can happen from here: Connection with the other groups of the organization: This is important as it will enable you to talk to parts of the prospect’s organization that are otherwise hard to reach out to. Most likely these will be folks who’ll have to give a nod to the solution that you are presenting. By asking for this question and getting this group involved early on, you’ll fasten the process. Talking to people who are part of the decision making: I have mentioned this in one of my previous blogs too. An IT organization typically consists of many departments. To keep it simple, let’s take an example of a customer running a consumer product. This organization will have a business team that decides what product should be rolled out to the consumers and the features it should have. Then there is the development group which is tasked with the development of the product/solution. Then there’s the financial organization which keeps a tab on the budget that can be used by the team. Finally there is a sourcing team that runs the vendor selection process and negotiates the contract with the vendor. In most cases, you’ll be either talking to the business or the development group. But for them to take a call on choosing you, they have to get a buy in from these other groups too. Talking and building a rapport with these groups early on can greatly help you in accelerating your sales cycle.
4. Get connected to their leadership
Great, so by now you have the buy in from the various stakeholders within the organization or at least are close to getting that buy in. Everything is in alignment except for the boss who has to put his/her signatures on the deal. In most cases the managers give this autonomy to their teams. So they normally come in at the end to seal the deal. But with a deal in the Information Technology world, which can go into the millions of dollars range, it can be too much of a loose end if the prospect’s leadership is completely unaware of you or your product. This step should be taken in the later stages of your sales cycle, but as demonstrated shouldn’t be left for too late in the process. Once you have all the teams convinced, you have the sale.
CONCLUSION
As important it is to let the non-goals pass away, it is also crucial to focus on what your objectives for the meeting should be. The profession of IT Sales is complicated enough. So if you are new to it and just focus on the feel good factor of your opportunity, it’ll seldom take you to the goal of maximizing your impact to the customers. Ensuring that you have certain objectives to look out for, helps you gauge how close or far you are from the target you have set. Keep the above objectives in mind before getting into a meeting with your prospect to make certain that you don’t get carried away with the not so important activities and are focused on your goals.
