Category: Phil Bernstein

You never know what happened right before the meeting started. What seems like rudeness might have another explanation.

A few weeks ago I was presenting to a law firm. Five people from the firm had been at the first meeting, and four were to be at the follow-up meeting. Three of them arrived on time, but we had to wait for the fourth – the managing partner of the firm.

He finally arrived 20 minutes late, with only the most perfunctory apology. He sat down and we got underway.

As I was going through my part of the presentation, the managing partner kept checking his smartphone, reading and sending texts. He wasn’t bothering to hide it, either. Midway through the meeting his phone rang. He answered it, and without even a glance at me he got up and left the room. His assistant signaled me to keep going, so I continued.

A few minutes later the managing partner came back in, sat down, and resumed paying attention to me and his phone simultaneously. I did my best to conceal my growing irritation at the guy’s clear lack of respect.

Eventually we got to the end of the presentation, and asked for a commitment. The managing partner said he needed to go through the financials with his accountant before he could make a decision.

I asked if he could give us an answer later in the week, and that’s when he dropped the bomb:

“I’m not sure,” he said. “My wife is out of town, and she was in a car wreck this morning. She’s in the hospital; we’re hoping she’ll be released tomorrow. As soon as this meeting’s over, I’ve got a six-hour drive to go see her.” He showed us some pictures of his wife’s car she had emailed to him – the entire front end smashed in, and the air bags deployed.

At that moment, all my irritation went away,  replaced by a strong sense of guilt. He hadn’t been disrespecting us – the fact that he showed up for the meeting at all was a powerful sign of how strongly he believed in keeping his commitment to me and the station. Under the circumstances, his lateness and divided attention were more than understandable.

A few weeks later, his wife is home and expected to make a full recovery. And I’ve re-learned a sales lesson.

The Sales Lesson Is…

When we sit down with a client, we often don’t know what else is going on in their world. They may have just been chewed out by their boss; a family member may be ill or injured. The solution we’re offering may be the most important thing on our mind… but there might be a much bigger problem on their mind.

Until you know the full story, give them the benefit of the doubt.

[reminder]

A sales presentation is like a circus. You need to control the show.

We were doing a needs analysis at an auto dealership in the southeast. The meeting was at the store, in the dealership General Manager’s office; the General Manager wanted us to know that he was in charge.

As the station AE, sales manager, and I tried to ask our questions, the client checked his email. His desk phone rang, and he answered it. His cell phone rang, and he answered it. Salespeople walked in and out of the office with papers to sign.

It was a circus… his circus… and he was the ringmaster.

Somehow we managed to gather enough information to take the next step, and we invited him to the station for a presentation in a couple of weeks. He accepted the invitation, we put it on the calendar, and left.

During the meeting, the client had told us that he really wanted a jingle for his store. We put a creative strategy together, found a good jingle company, and had a spec produced using the strategy we had devised. We built the proposal and rehearsed it. On Presentation Day, we were ready.

About 40 minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin, the dealer’s assistant called. “Bob doesn’t have time to come to the station today. He wants to know if you can do the presentation in his office.”

The account executive, sales manager, and I looked at each other, and agreed on the answer.

“No.”

We knew that if we went to his office, it would be chaos once again. Ringing phones, paperwork, and constant interruptions. There was no way to do a cohesive presentation on his turf. The AE called the store back, and politely told the assistant that the only way we could do the presentation was if Bob came to the station. “And by the way,” she told the assistant, “we think Bob is really going to like the jingle.”

For the rest of the week, we were at a stalemate. Bob wouldn’t come to us, and we wouldn’t go to him. When I left town at the end of the week, we agreed that I would do the presentation as a webinar — but only if Bob came to the station.

Two weeks went by. Every few days, the account executive called the dealership and politely reminded the assistant that she would love to play the new jingle for Bob. One day I got an email from the AE: “Bob has agreed to come to us! Can you do a webinar next Monday?”

The short version of what happened next: Bob came to the station for the webinar on Monday, liked our creative strategy, and loved the jingle. A few days later, he agreed to a $60,000 annual commitment.

The Sales Lessons of This Story

[bctt tweet=”A sales presentation is like a circus. You need to control the show.”]

1. Your best chance at a successful presentation comes when you control the environment. Author and marketing consultant Perry Marshall compares a presenter to a lion tamer:

The circus animals will test you to see if you’re jumpy. They’ll throw you curve balls. In some situations they might even cast insults or lie to you, observing how you’ll react. If they detect a chink in your armor, they’ll pounce on you like a pack of hungry jackals. Circus Brimstone. But nothing unnerves them like a stoic, unflappable opponent who knows his position inside and out.

A circus trainer must always enter the ring first, and in full sight of the lions. In doing so, he establishes that the ring is his territory, not theirs, a notion that he reinforces by shouting, by stomping about, by snapping his whip.

The lions are impressed. Mighty predators though they are, they crawl in with their tails low…

It’s always better to do the sales presentation on your territory, not theirs. Wherever possible, make them come to your office.

2. Sometimes the most effective answer you can give a client is a firm “No.”

“No” won’t work if the client views your offering as a commodity. It will work if you have something that the client values, and can’t get anywhere else. If you have what the client wants, “No” changes the terms of the interaction, and puts you in charge.

[reminder]How have you regained control of a sales interaction?[/reminder]

Have you ever been blindsided during a presentation? Every now and then you can lose a sure-thing sale because of something that – it seems in hindsight – you really, really should have known about.

About six years ago I presented an advertising plan to a dentist in Montana. I had met with him a couple of weeks before, and he had been open, enthusiastic, and eager to hear my ideas. Out of 27 presentations I was scheduled to do that week, this one seemed to be a slam dunk — he was primed to do something, and I had the perfect plan for him.

The meeting didn’t go the way I’d planned. Not even close.

[bctt tweet=”Sales Tip: A lot can change for the client in a couple of weeks. It pays to ask.”]

He argued with me about my overall marketing philosophy, didn’t like the strategy I proposed, and called my script “simple-minded”. His demeanor was dismissive, on the edge of downright rude. At the end of the meeting, he told us he’d “think about it”, and walked out before we could ask him anything more.

I was stunned. Usually when a meeting goes bad I know what went wrong. This time a big opportunity had blown up, and I had no idea why.

The next day the dentist’s wife, who’d been at both meetings, called the station Account Executive to apologize. A few hours before our presentation, they had met with their accountant and learned that there was more than $100,000 missing from the practice’s bank account. Embezzlement was suspected. He wasn’t going to buy anything from anyone for a while.

Today’s Sales Lesson: The World Can Change In a Couple of Weeks

Ever since that day, I start every presentation this way:

“Before we begin, I need to ask a quick question. Has anything changed since our last meeting?”

 Most of the time, nothing has, and I can launch things without a problem. But over the past five years, by asking that question I’ve learned that between the last meeting and this one:

·       The owner has just decided to sell the business.

·       The company has agreed to merge with a competitor, all decisions are on hold for the next six months, and the guy we’re meeting with will be leaving the company.

·       The store has picked up a new product line, and will be retooling its marketing substantially.

·       The medical practice has just hired an advertising agency.

Learning this information before diving in has allowed me to make adjustments on the fly. Sometimes it’s caused me to make major changes to the strategy I recommended. On two occasions, we even agreed to cancel the presentation — it was going to be a waste everyone’s time.

Things happen quickly in business, and the questions you asked on Tuesday could have completely different answers the following Monday. Asking if anything’s changed before you dive in can save you enormous heartache.

[reminder]What’s the biggest surprise you’ve gotten at a sales meeting?[/reminder]