Pre-Selling Meetings

I've been talking a lot about my program "Free Sessions that Sell" where you can master the art of offering complimentary sessions that ultimately turn prospects into clients.

Today I'm going to talk about how to set up the ideal conditions to conduct those free sessions. To do that I'm going to give you a brief overview of the game of marketing, "Marketing Ball."

In playing Marketing Ball, the first objective is to gain the attention and interest of a prospect by effectively communicating your marketing message. If the prospect shows interest, you are now on First Base; and the prospect is interested in learning more.

At this point they are usually not ready for a free session. They need to travel the distance between First and Second Bases where they become more familiar with you and your business, get more information about your business and get an actual experience of who you are and what you do.

When a prospect is at the stage of experience, then it's much easier to set up complimentary sessions with them as they are now eager to know how you can help them.

A question I often get is, "I have prospects who are familiar with me; they have visited my web site and understand the value of my services, but how do I give them an experience of me?"

The best way to give an experience is with a live interaction of some sort, a more in-depth connection that gives people a deeper sense of what you do and the results you produce. One way to do this is with a talk or presentation. The other, more common, way is what I call a "Pre-Selling Meeting."

A Pre-Selling Meeting is an opportunity to give the prospect an experience of you; but is not a sales appointment or a complimentary session. These are not hard to set up or difficult to conduct. Let me give you an outline of the steps.

Five Steps from Pre-Selling Meetings to Free Sessions

1. You meet someone, perhaps a prospect or someone who could refer you to prospects. Maybe it's at a networking function or at a social gathering. After talking, you say, "It was nice meeting you and learning about your business. I'd like to get together with you over coffee and find out more about your business and tell you more about mine and see if we could help each other."

You may be surprised how readily people will set up these pre-selling meetings. There's something in it for them.

2. Meet for exactly that purpose. Keep it to an hour or so. Find out about them first. Ask question about their business and make it your aim to understand what they do, the kind of results they produce and who an ideal client is for them.

Make sure to listen with very close attention. Don't just "get through" this part; be engaged.

3. Then you go next. Follow my system of Marketing Syntax where you cover ideas in a certain order: Ideal clients, problems or issues these clients face, results you produce for these clients, and a client success story or two.

You're not selling at this point. You are having a conversation that educates and inspires them about your business.

4. At the end of the conversation several things may have happened: a) you now know something about them and will feel more comfortable referring people to them, b) they now know something about you and will be more comfortable referring people to you, and c) they may show some interest in knowing more about how your services could help them.

If c) happens, you're being invited to take them to second base. Make sure to take advantage of that invitation.

5. The complimentary session is easy to offer at this point: "Something I offer to people who are interested in my services is a complimentary "Marketing Strategy Session" (create a name for your free session) where we explore your goals in more depth, what challenges you are facing, and how you can create a marketing strategy that will bring you more clients. Why don't we look at a time we could set up a session?"

Answer any questions they might have and then set up the session as an in-person or phone meeting.

Since you have played Marketing Ball flawlessly and moved them around the bases effortlessly, they are very likely to accept your invitation to this complimentary session.

One of the biggest mistakes people make in Marketing Ball is to jump to the free session or the selling conversation too quickly. Instead, slow down, develop the relationship and get to know your prospect first, and then setting up free sessions will be a natural next step, done without any pressure or manipulation.

About the worst that can come from these pre-selling conversations is you'll get to know each other better and will send each other business. And that's not a bad outcome either!

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The More Clients Bottom Line: Don't jump to second base to set up free sessions or selling conversations. Instead, put your focus on the intermediate goal of having pre-selling meetings where you set the groundwork for a free session.

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Do you have a story about where you jumped in too quickly to have a free session or selling conversation and ended up blowing it? Please share on the More Clients Blog.

Comments

[Francis Wade]

I recently read a book called Exceptional Selling by Jeff Thull that speaks to this issue in brilliant terms (IMHO) by saying that initial meetings are all about determining the depth of the problem, followed by meetings to determine the solution and to present a proposal.

[Meredith]

This is great advice. I would add that in the pre-selling meeting be listening for ALL the ways you can help them, not just through your services. If you know someone who might be a prospective client, or could fill a vendor or employee need they have - help them out. This is the true basis of "networking" - making friends and helping each other.