Working the First Sales Meeting with High Tech Customers

Stepping into a first sales meeting with a new customer is like stepping into new potential. You have new potential to be the best champion you can be for both your customer and your company. Together let’s dive into how you can both sell for yourself and your customer in this round one meeting.

Sales Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Build rapport 

It is incredibly easy to jump into your sales pitch after a short introduction. Want to know more about the “scan rate”? How the technology was invented? Why do people use our products over others? As much as something like this is important to get to, make sure your customer feels seen and heard above the surface of the call. 

Here are some good questions to ask when you want to build rapport but not jump into business too soon: 

• So, what made you interested in our product/company?
• What are some of your goals in your project right now?
• What is your background before you worked at (current company)?
• I saw you went to (school). I heard it is amazing, how did you like it?

The list could go on and sometimes the rapport just will not build. If the client is not leaning into it, feel free to move on. 

Sales Team Photo by Arlington Research on Unsplash

Set an agenda for your first sales meeting

Organizing the flow of a sales meeting can be a good parameter for creating talking points. If you do your research on the client, have a few notes handy about their needs analysis beforehand. This shows you know where they are coming from and allows initial meetings to be a bit more productive. You can also ask the prospect what they want to cover in the first meeting. Tech sales conversations have hours and hours worth of conversation potential, make sure to lean into what the client has come wanting to find out.

The truth is you most likely will not make the sale in the first meeting. Allow your first sales meeting to be about getting to know the client and learning about how they would interact with your product. Do not just merely focus on the product. 

Fill in your agenda with notes to create a good base of knowledge to send an intricate follow-up email. This will not be a copy and paste act later, your notes will guide you. 

The product talk 

Most initial sales meetings do not begin with a live demo unless pre-discussed. If your client wants one and you were not prepared for it make sure to steer the conversation to something productive. You can ask them what questions they might have or what they want the product to do in return for them. If their list seems exceedingly long, feel free to offer for them to email it to you. If they are only open to seeing a live demo, ask when they are available for one.

They might not come with questions prepped; ask about pain points, and other questions oriented to getting to know the company’s needs. Find out the problem they want to solve and see if your product is their potential solution (aka a potential sale). 

If you find out the product will not solve anything for them, feel free to use this great line from a Hubspot blog: “I can’t help you with that problem. Our product doesn’t do that and I don’t know how you’d avoid it. But there are a handful of other problems that we solve. While it might not be your highest priority, if we could help you avoid risk X and save cost Y, would you be interested in having that conversation at some point?”

Sales Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash

Price and/or success stories in a first sales meeting

Never be afraid to answer the price question! We know there are risks involved but it is bound to come up sooner rather than later. Talking about pricing varies in different tech sales product realms, so feel free to look into how to structure your specific product sale. When talking about price, always frame the decision as an investment rather than just a cost. Make sure to answer their price questions and allow it to open doors to other ones, like success stories. 

Intertwining the product and price talk with success stories creates the investment narrative. Feel free to share testimonials and stories that go along with the product they are interested in. The buyer wants to hear how others have interacted with something they might purchase. If there is a section on your website that shares these, feel free to send it over to the client. 

Leave a lot of time for questions during the meeting

You just made a small pitch to the client; that’s great, but make sure not to ramble or overtake the conversation. Leave time for their questions and, if possible, for your answers. If you are unable to dive into the answers due to time because it needs more detail-oriented research, let them know. Tell them you’d like to take the time to get the specifics for them and use it to drive your “next step” conversation. You can also make the promise that it will be in their inbox by the end of the week. 

When you keep your promise on the research and timeliness, it will both help your company and product look good. 

Find the next logical step

Never leave the first sales meeting without diving into a potential next step with the customer. When the last 5-3 minutes begin to creep up, feel free to cut the conversation and ask if they are available to stay on if you do not have another meeting. Or you can ask if they would like to schedule another call. 

The best practice is whenever the meeting ends, have a way to communicate with the person(s) following. Ask if they want you to loop anyone else into the follow-up email that might contain more specs for them. Afterward, you’ll make time to prep the follow-up email which we dive into a little bit in our upcoming Post-Sales-Call blog post. 

These first sales meetings do not necessarily have to be one thing or the other. The main goal should always be about learning more about the interested party so you can see how your products might interconnect. Having discovery meetings with the humans in mind can help you gain referrals or make a connection with a company that can take you further even if you do not make the sale. It appears contradictory, but a connection can take you further rather than a hard pitch followed by a hard no.