Since COVID, most of my sales meetings have been online, and I’ve forgotten some of the best practices of in-person sales meetings, so I wanted to share some insights with you.
1. Travelling time
Allocate travelling time in your diary to ensure you get to the venue an hour or 30 minutes before your meeting.
2. Access to the venue
Have the cellphone number of the person you are meeting with and ensure you can carry everything yourself. Allocate time for security checks, walking into big buildings and finding a venue. Very often, Google Maps isn’t reliable for finding a venue. Also, ask them for a map of the venue if they have one, and orientate yourself to find the venue. Have your Driver’s license readily available to be scanned at the gate.
3. Your presentation
If you present at a large corporation, their systems might block you from accessing their Wi-Fi and connecting with their HDMI cables. They also don’t often allow you to use a memory stick to open your presentation from their laptops.
You can save your presentation in the cloud on Google Drive and share this link before the presentation with your client in case your laptop won’t connect to their system. If your presentation isn’t too large, you can send it via WeTransfer to their email address.
4. Videos and sound
Many of the systems also block access to YouTube. Download any videos that you want to take along, and don’t rely on their speakers for sound; take an external speaker along.
5. Have a back-up plan
You can never entirely rely on technology. You can always do your entire presentation or showcase without slides. Use a mind map, print out your notes, or use queue cards to guide you.
6. Take an attendance register
People rarely give their contact details on an electronic profile; a paper-based attendance register and feedback form is sometimes the best way to capture contact details and then send handouts afterwards.
If you need help putting together your sales presentation or equipping your team with confidence, style, and gravitas for their pitches, I’d love to help.
My Power of Persuasion Presentation boot camp offers a 6-week online program that can be provided in-house for your team.