I have decided to try and start my own business and this week I have my first appointment with a possible customer and quite a large and professional one
Ok.......
Before you go any further, you mention that you have decided to 'TRY' and start your own business.
Have you started a company or not?
lets say this appointment goes really well and Mr Prospect says 'Yeah, love it i want to go ahead now' if you have not got a business yet or a company you are then completely stumped - so before you go there trying to sell anything you should really have things in place for all eventualities.
Its not the end of the world if you haven't done this yet but i would certainly make him aware of this straight away, you can treat the meeting in more of a fact finding or 'i have an idea that i think will work well alongside your offering' kind of way.
if you do have the infrastructure in place to accept business now then your appointment should go roughly as follows;
1)
getting accepted (usually the hand shake stage and some small talk)this should perhaps only take seconds.
2)
once you have sat down you might find that they start talking early on about why you are there - this can sometimes send things out of sync more than likely meaning you will miss something. As early as possible you need to make some sort of statement to grab his interest. i always use this section to make reference to a LOCAL or well know customer that has made either an efficiency saving or cost saving by using our services - it needs to be something that makes him want to know more. As you are a brand new company you will have to come up with something yourself that you know will attract interest.
3)
you then need to say;
'before i go into detail about what i do (or can offer) i wonder if i could ask a little more about your current situation so that i understand everything (or that i don't misunderstand) how we might be able to work together'
this will involve either them giving you all the info you need without much provocation or (more than likely) you asking some prepared questions. This is critical; you need to think hard before you go into the meeting about EVERYTHING you would like to know about this area of their business and make sure you cover it all in your list of questions.
Once they have covered everything and you have taken note of everything (the note taking is very important A for you and B so that they see you are trying to get all the information) people like efficient business meetings - it makes them feel like they are going to go away and do what they say based on the meeting itself rather than anything generic.
4)
this is where you get to SELL, tell them all about what you do, your experience, how much it will save them, how much it will make them, what you can do that they don't already do - how having you on board as a business partner will add value to their current operation.
This is where the true selling comes into its own; make your sell tailored to the answers they gave earlier; listen for their pains and problems and if your solution gives a solution s to these then make sure you highlight this, point out that you can make a difference.
5)
once you have finished telling them all about you and what you can do, asked them what they think, ask them if this is something that they think might be useful to them. if you get a YES then great, if you get a NO then ask why ask if you covered all of their points and provided solution to problems for them - if they come up with an objection that you can recover or provide acceptable answers to this should in some way steer you towards getting the yes that you didn't get earlier.
6)
once you get the yes, put the ball in their court by asking; whats the best way to move forward on this' - hopefully they will give you some indication of what they have to do in order to do business with you or suggest booking another meeting, perhaps they might give you information to take away to prepare a quote or proposal - this is what you need to finally seal the business.
The above is a kind of standardised structured way of selling that been around for years; people adapt this to what works for them - some appointments will be totally dictated by the other person, some will last 5 minutes, some people will not want to tell you anything and only sit there whilst you talk - i have even been in the chair and been told within 3 seconds ' right sell to me'!!!!
All this info gives you is an insight as to how to get the most prom each meeting if allowed to. the main thing to remember though is DON'T sound like a salesman, all the above can be done in a non sales, conversational way that makes it come across as more of a chat rather than a SELL (if rehearsed and practised enough)
Hope this is of some use.
Good luck
