How to Prepare for Your Next Client Meeting
What should I expect before meeting with a prospective client?
You have landed an initial meeting with a potential brand-new customer. Congrats! However, now you're faced with one of the more common sales stressors — preparing for the meeting.
In this case, the relationship is new. This means that even though it’s exciting to have a potential new client, the parties don’t know each other, so it can be extra hard to know what to prepare. It feels like the pressure is on.
This pre-meeting stage provides a chance to educate your prospect, differentiate yourself, and create momentum going into that all-important initial meeting.
Don’t forget, introductory meetings are often just that — an introduction. It's an opportunity to learn a little bit about each other, including the supplier's capabilities and the customer's challenges. Do your research, but also give yourself the chance to establish a connection and let the prospect see how you think.
What information should I send before the first meeting?
It's tragic when the first meeting is wasted taking the prospect through your corporate slide deck. If there is any time left after this, there is usually no audience energy for the vastly more important activities. You want to be able to get right to the meat and potatoes of the meeting — understanding the customer's motivation, building rapport, and asking insightful questions.
So, what should you send to your prospective client before the meeting? Well, if there's an agenda or the prospect has asked for certain things, send them exactly what they asked for. Otherwise, send them something personally curated for that specific meeting. Consider sending any of the following information beforehand to ensure an effective first meeting.
Company Information
Include your company backgrounder, overview, or video, but don't send everything you've got. Choose the simplest, most relevant piece of information and send that.
Audience-focused Information
The right information can help you get the right people in the room. How many times have you heard something like, "Oh, I wish Sally was here, she really should hear this…". If you need specific personnel in the room, make sure to include targeted, ideally non-salesy, information that is relevant to the role. For example, if you need “Sally the IT Director” in the room, make sure to share IT-focused materials in your pre-meeting package.
Your Team Information
Include contact info and a little bit about team members who will interact with the prospect.
How should I send information to customers?
You have several options to consider when sending your information to customers, including sharing files using cloud storage or directing prospects to your website. While these can be effective, the most common method of sending your content is via email attachments (PDFs, PPTs, docs, etc.).
Email works for this purpose, and prospects are used to getting sent info by email. Unfortunately, it isn’t without its faults. The visual presentation is lacking and comes across as generic. It’s challenging to send larger files, like videos, and there is always the possibility of information getting lost in someone’s inbox. If recipients ever want to reference back to those attachments, it can be hard to locate them within cluttered email folders.
When it comes down to it, simply choose the method that works best for you and your company.
Share your information with Flipdeck
With Flipdeck, you can package all your content together and send it any way that you would share a URL. The presentation of your information is visual and interactive, giving your audience a convenient way to peruse and take in your information. Our simple, digital format makes it easy to pass around within your prospect's organization or attach to a meeting invite.
When you send a Flipdeck, you can tailor the information included and personalize the presentation for each prospect. Plus, after the initial meeting, when your prospect shows interest in certain things, you can just drop new information into the same Flipdeck.
The best part? You get one of the things you want most from a first meeting, before the meeting even takes place — differentiation of your company, you, and how you do things.
Struggling to decide what to do next after this first meeting goes well? Check out our accompanying article, “Prepare to Follow Up After a Client Meeting” for more tips and tricks.
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