Peady’s Selling Engagement sponsored by IRD Prospector

Welcome to this week’s post on sales and selling success.

One of my gripes is the lack of time media sales people spend in front of their customers (and potential customers). When I ask the question “why are so few F2F calls made” I get the usual “I’m too busy” BS story from reps and sales managers. But how can you be “too busy” to meet with customers? Too busy doing what? No other part of the job is more important!

The flip side of low client call rates is that the customers say they are “too busy” to meet – I call BS on that too. It’s a brush off most experienced salespeople should be able to handle with ease.

There’s no doubt that communication tools such as email, the phone or Skype have replaced F2F meetings which is a shame because, not surprisingly, time spent in front of customers is absolutely connected to business written, target achievement and relationship building. 

The advantages

F2F client meetings give you an advantage over the competition, provide you with the opportunity to really connect on a deeper level and allow you to read each other’s body language while gauging reactions to questions and the responses.

Then there’s the matter of simple ROI – you have a 40% better chance of converting a customer in a F2F meeting than via email, phone or remote meeting format such as Skype.
Source: MPI Foundation

The metrics

To prove my point about lack of calls here’s some research on the number of F2F calls each week showing that on average a massive three-quarters of salespeople attend less than 5 meetings each week!

• 1 to 5 meetings = 74%
• 5 to 10 meetings = 14%
• 10 to 15 meetings = 12%

Source: “Sales Performance Optimization Study” CSO Insights

In my opinion 10 client-facing meetings each week should be the minimum. Do you agree?

Finally, what do the customers think?

When you do get in front of your customer what are their expectations?

A few years ago, a company called salesSHIFT asked customers about their #1 pet peeve relating to sales people. The primary response was: “I wish that sales reps would take the time to understand me and my business”

Source: SalesShift.ca

Who can blame them? Knowing your customer is a prerequisite for any productive sales conversation. With the vast number of resources available to us to obtain people, company and industry information we should be embarrassed to pick up the phone, or go to a first meeting, without a good understanding of who we are talking to, their company’s interests, and the state of their industry.

As always, I invite your comments – do you agree or disagree with what I’ve said? Have the conversation with your peers, what do they think? Let me know, after all what works for some may not work for you.

Until next week, good selling! 

About the author 

Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.

He can be contacted at [email protected]