Three Must Do Strategies For Effective Sales Meetings | Alex Dripchak - 1483

When you have sales meetings with your prospects, the last you need is a boring presentation turning people away from your awesome content. You want them to get excited! And on today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Alex Dripchak, relationship manager at Mercer, to give us his inside tips to learn how to lead, run, and organize effective meetings.

 

Why is Alex so passionate about demystifying sales?

• Alex founded and runs Commence, a college to career development skill program.
• He’s also recently published a book on destigmatizing sales for younger people, which breaks down the positive traits and skills salespeople have.

• With 57 U.S. colleges having an official sales major, the word “sales” is slowly become less of a dirty word. However, there is an entrenched viewpoint people need to overcome.

 

How can you lead effective meetings in your sales life?

• There are components of meetings, whether virtual or in-person, that just suck. Namely, when people push their own agendas down your throat. So, how instead can you turn that into an effective meeting?
• Structure your meetings around reaching individual goals that lead to the end result.
• Keep yourself dynamic and versatile in responding to the needs of individual clients.
• Ask better questions that lead to higher engagement to encourage the prospect’s voice.
• To save time, create a framework to use for every first call, contract negotiation, or meeting with a specific purpose. Then, tailor that framework for individual clients, so you don’t recreate the wheel each time.

 

The Three Strategies:

• Shut up and listen
• Develop effective questions
• Rehearse and practice

 

Of course, what would TSE be without a bonus strategy?

• Understand the subtlety between question and engagement prompts. 
• The default is inertia, or lack of movement. Get your prospects to engage with you.
• For example, Alex responds, “did I answer your question in full” after answering a prospect’s question.
• Not only does this put the onus on himself, but it also encourages prospects to further indicate if they need more explanation. 
• Integrate engagement prompts throughout a presentation or meeting to keep people focused. Don’t set aside 20 minutes for a Q&A that may or may not be needed.
• Stop treating people as roles, prospects, and managers. Think of them as people. They aren’t just invested in the company, they’re invested in themselves. 

 

Alex’s major takeaway: Especially in complex sales, make sure you spend time proportionally to its importance. If you aren’t bordering on something tedious and tiresome for an important task, you haven’t gone far enough.

 

To get in contact with Alex, you can find him at his website (which includes links and information to his new book), his coaching website for current college students and recent graduates, or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

 

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

 

This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey.

 

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Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com