Came across this page on reddit: How to Maximize Your Sales Appointments
The advice is to structure the meeting like this:
- Small talk and being human
- Brief self introduction
- Understand the client – ask questions and understand needs
- If no fit, end the meeting
- Discuss price range
- If no fit, end the meeting
- Find out more about how the purchasing decision gets made / what support or information the prospect needs to make the decision
- Try to get the process for this next step going
- Schedule a concrete followup
I think that this is an excellent structure for the people who are networking – i.e., when the product is yourself. How would you sell yourself if you were going to follow these steps?