A note to a TM: These three questions will seriously improve the quality of your meetings

Hello my friend,

Most of your time is spent in meetings. Your clients’ often try to avoid them. Nonetheless, meetings are the medium for setting goals, training, motivation, and tracking progress. Haphazardly planned meetings are unfortunately common. They increase the likelihood of downward price pressure and disloyalty. Rather than risk underwhelming your clients, ask these three questions when planning your meetings in order to create energetic, high-out-put results:

“How do I want my customer to FEEL when the meeting is over?”

Excited? Intrigued? Grateful? Committed? Focused? Empathetically consider your client’s emotional output as a result of your meeting. Ask yourself: “What or how will I intentionally contribute to the meeting in order to create the desired emotional output?”

“What do I want my customer to THINK when the meeting is over?”

Obviously “Thank goodness that meeting is finished!” isn’t what you’re aiming for. You are, however, responsible for capturing your client’s attention and training them to view your organization’s capabilities and its products preferentially. Think about the training or the material that you want to share during the meeting. How or why will it create preference? How will your client think differently after the meeting and because of your involvement?

“What do I want my customers to DO when the meeting is over?”

Your success depends on your clients’ willingness to buy more of your products and less of the competition’s. This is an act of volunteerism on your clients’ behalf (never forget that). How will the time you spend in a meeting change their behavior afterwards? Do they have the emotional buy-in, the understanding, and the motivation to act on your behalf? How will measure the progress? How will you sustain the results?

I know that you want your clients to view you as a professional who knows how to get things done, doesn’t waste time, and consistently delivers results. There’s nothing accidental about achieving these outcomes. Great sales professionals are intentional and transformational in their thinking, planning, and executing. The best sales people don’t sell the transaction, they sell the transformation.