03. a. When you get to the Discussion Table: Introduction

So, you established Familiarity, Credibility and Value (FCV) through your pre-sales meeting endeavours and got yourself a seat at the table.

That’s half the battle won!

Only half, though. The other half still remains.

And here is an important truth to bear in mind: you can easily destroy the image that you have so tenaciously created of yourself, if you get a few essentials related to your conduct at the first meeting wrong.

A brief recap of the lessons that we have had so far will help us

 

The Purpose of Your Sales Opening

Here are three lessons that we have had so far, which you need to bear in mind as you open your sales dialogue with the prospect:

  1. You will be unable to get a prospect to open up to you just because you ask them to
  1. You cannot pitch your product right, or pitch the right product from your portfolio, unless you get the customer to open up to you about the matters mentioned earlier
  1. You are merely one of many salespeople, who are trying to get the customer to ‘consult with’ them. Your customer is not going to consult all of them. He will consult with a select few, who he trusts will be worth his time. The key is to be the one the customer will consult with

Thus, it pays to bear the purpose of your opening sales conversation in mind: you are trying to inspire your customer to want to consult with you, or simply put, discuss matters related to their organisational strategy and their current pain points with you, thus enabling you to construct the right pitch.

And that requires you to solidify your FCV message further.

“Why”, you ask?

 

Hadn’t you Established FCV when you had set up the meeting?

Of course you had established FCV before the meeting was set up. It was why this meeting was agreed to. However, a certain time would have elapsed since that day. And, you do not expect your prospect to remember you as that ‘friend of a trusted friend’ now do you?

There’s Familiarity going down the drain.

Also, when you are face-to-face with prospects, based on how they perceive you at first glance, they need to feel like you are someone worth

Here are a few ideas to help you:

What you need to do is continue building FCV when you get to the discussion table with the customer.

This set of lessons is about those essentials. Practice these and you will continue building FCV, leading your customers to be fully convinced that you are someone they can safely have a consultative dialogue with; that you are worth their time.

Click on the Mark Complete button below and move to the next lesson to learn how you can solidify your FCV message.

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