Have you ever been surprised in a sales meeting where you thought you had an hour that got cut to 30 minutes?
What about showing up to a sales meeting prepared to discuss one thing, only to find the prospect wanted to cover something else?
Have you ever been caught flat-footed because a prospect wanted some specific information that you didn’t bring, or perhaps you needed specific information from the prospect that they weren’t prepared to provide?
All of these scenarios as well as other problems can easily be avoided by getting upfront agreement, or contract, on the agenda for you sales meeting.
Five elements of an Upfront Contract (ground-rules for your meeting)
There are five elements of agreement that will lay the ground rules to help you maintain control of the selling process and ensure a productive sales meeting.
1. Purpose of the meeting
2. Prospect’s expectations and agenda
3. Your expectations and agenda
4. Time
5. Outcome
Purpose of the meeting
Every contact with a prospect should have a specific purpose.
The purpose of the initial meeting will most likely be a mutual exploration of their business and yours to see if there is a potential fit.
Subsequent meetings might involve a product demo, a presentation or determining project scope and budgetary guidelines.
Prospect’s expectations and agenda
This element is always put before your agenda for two reasons.
First, it gives priority to making sure the prospect’s concerns will be addressed. This also breaks the pattern of the typical salesperson who is ready to pounce with all their features and benefits regardless of the wants of the prospect.
Second, the prospect’s expectations will guide the direction and content of your agenda.
Understanding their expectations up front will protect you from being blind-sided in the meeting by allowing you to prepare the information they are most interested in seeing.
Your expectations and agenda
Once you know their expectations, you can let them know if there will be any specific information you will need from them to best serve their needs.
Make sure the prospect understands what you’ll need from them, and that they are committed to providing it. Uncertainty and wavering are not options here.
Time
The time includes when and where the meeting will be held and the duration. It is better to allot too much time than not enough—you can always end the meeting early once you have covered everything you intended.
Outcome
While all five elements are critical to removing confusion and mutual misunderstandings, setting the outcome for the meeting will set you apart from most salespeople and reduce apprehension.
There are only two possible outcomes that are possible from any sales interaction— a NO or a YES.
A NO simply means that there isn’t a good fit or a reason to do business together. Always mention this possibility first. Let the prospect know up front that a NO is perfectly acceptable and, in fact, appreciated.
While it may seem counterintuitive, this will take a lot of pressure off your prospect and make you different from every other salesperson they’ve met. They will likely welcome this change.
It may be a bit scary to mention the possibility of a NO up front. Trust me, you won’t drive them away if there is a real need or they want your product.
On the flip side, you can’t lose something you never really had.
The second potential outcome is a YES. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean they will be pulling out their checkbook at the end of the meeting. It simply means that together, you have found enough reasons to continue the process with another meeting, a product demo, a presentation, a quote or some other next step.
Prospects often try to introduce a third—the dreaded MAYBE or, some form of “I’ll get back to you.” This third way is in reality a NO that the prospect isn’t comfortable telling you. This ends up wasting a lot of time and energy on your part as you chase after a possible YES that doesn’t exist, and wastes their time and energy stringing you along or avoiding you.
When do you use this agreement?
There are several times during the sales cycle where you should establish this agreement with your prospect.
The first is when you’re on the phone with your prospect, setting up your sales meeting. This gives both of you the ability to prepare for the meeting and greatly reduces surprises and conflicts.
Always start each meeting by recapping the agreement you discussed when setting the meeting. Find out if anything has changed since that call.
Are their issues still the same? Have new concerns come up? Are there any conflicts that will interfere with the original duration of the meeting?
You can also restate the agreement in a reminder email the day before or day of the scheduled meeting to make sure both of you are still on the same page.
You should always set up a new agreement at the conclusion of every meeting for the next step, just as you did when scheduling the current meeting.
Always establish agreement when you close a sale to verify expectations, delivery dates and any other requirements. This is also a good time to discuss referrals or future business.
How do you set up the agreement?
We’ve discussed why it’s important to establish an agreement with your prospect and when to use them. Now let’s talk about how to do it.
ANOT is a simple acronym that will help you remember to include all the elements of the agreement while still sounding conversational.
- Appreciate
- Naturally
- Obviously
- Typically
Appreciate
This is where you will state the purpose and time for the meeting.
For example when setting the meeting, “I appreciate your invitation to spend an hour with you next Thursday at 3 p.m. to discuss your…”
Naturally
This is where you will verify the prospect’s agenda.
“Naturally, you will have some questions for me. Is there anything in particular you would like me to cover?”
Obviously
Here, you will address your agenda. You will let them know that you will need to ask them questions to find out more about their business and their specific needs.
This is where you would, if needed, alert them to any specific information they will need to provide during the meeting to determine if there is a good fit.
“Obviously, I will need to ask you some questions about…. Are you comfortable with that?”
Typically
Now you’re going to set expectations for the outcome, such as, “Typically there are two outcomes from a meeting like this. I want you to feel comfortable telling me no if you feel there’s not a good fit, and I will do the same. We can part as friends. On the other hand, if we both feel further action is warranted, we can determine the most appropriate next step. Is that fair?”
Notice the question at the end allows the prospect to give their verbal agreement. Remember this is an agreement, not you dictating terms of surrender. Get their input and buy-in through the entire establishment of a clear agenda.
Address your biggest fear
An added benefit to the upfront agreement is it gives you a place to address your biggest fear.
Once you’ve established the five elements of the agreement, you can bring up your biggest fear at the beginning of the meeting to deal with any potential deal-breakers at the start.
For instance, if your biggest fear that they may not have the budget to afford your product, you might say, “My biggest fear is that we might get derailed when it comes around to discussing the budget. May we talk a little bit about that first to get that out of the way?”
Perhaps your biggest fear might be that you forget to ask for referrals. In that case you might say, “My biggest fear is that we won’t discuss referrals. Jim, will you remind me to bring that up before the end of the meeting?”
Remove distractions
In today’s hyper-connected world, distractions and interruptions from text messages, email, phone calls and other notifications have become the norm, but they can wreak havoc on a meeting.
After restating the agenda, you can say something like, “I want to give you my full, undivided attention during our meeting today. I’m going to turn on “do not disturb” for all my devices, and I invite you to do the same so we can focus on your concerns, uninterrupted, for the next hour.”
This shows that you value their time, and they will usually honor your request as well.
The value of a decision
When establishing an agreement is done properly so both parties clearly understand what will be discussed in the meeting, and that it includes what both of you want to cover, it allows a clear, informed decision to be made at the conclusion.
In addition, when the prospect knows the have the ability to give you a NO, you avoid the squishy MAYBE and undefined next steps. This lets you avoid wasting your time and energy pursuing something that doesn’t exist, and it gives you the confidence that continuing with specific next steps still has actual potential for closing the sale at some point.
Take control of your sales meetings
Start employing upfront agreements for every meeting from now on to avoid surprises and misunderstandings and get a real decision at the conclusion.
Both you and your prospects will appreciate how productive your sales meetings will be—it’s a win-win.
I work with sales professionals every day, helping them learn and implement an effective, efficient selling system that delivers career-changing and life-changing results when followed every time.
If you’d like to find out more about building rapport and how it fits into this selling system, send me an email at frank.Gustafson@sandler.com.
We can schedule a quick Zoom call to talk about your needs and see if what we do might be a fit for you or not.
There’s a popular Chinese proverb that states, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
Here’s to your success!
Frank Gustafson
P.S. I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts in the comments below. Feel free to include your experiences with nightmare sales meetings that totally went off the rails or home runs where everything went exactly as you planned.