If you get more high-value sales appointments, you increase your chances of closing new accounts.

The lack of new accounts is often due to the lack new sales appointments.

It’s that simple.

If you have a pipeline, it will look something like this:

Discovery Call/Demo/Meeting → Qualified → Negotiating → Closed (Won/Lost)

Everything rises and falls on that first sales appointment.

Enemy of revenue: Lack of sales appointments

Consider your sales pipeline like a journey.

The destination Closed (Won or Lost) is the macro win.

This win is where you get the big sale and the contract is signed.

We celebrate this, review this and do everything it takes to get this win.

But you get there by taking the first step. Each step is a micro win. Often, we overlook the micro wins.

Those small commitments we get from the prospect which consistently moves the sale forward.

That’s why the sales appointment, that first meeting is so important.

It’s your first true win.

Without it, you have no chance of getting the big final win of closing.

Understanding this micro win principle is fundamental to getting prospects to meet with you.

Here are some reasons why they won’t.

Reason #1: “Selling” the product, not the meeting

A big mistake we see people make is that in their attempt to get an appointment, they sell their products or services.

When asking for a meeting, we’re not asking the prospect to buy our product.

Or to make a decision right now.

Or even to change the way they operate as soon as possible.

In fact, if possible we should avoid talking about the details of your product.

Goal: to “sell” the meeting.

And this includes having an answer to why should they spend 30 minutes of their lives with you on a phone call.

Just the phone call.

The fastest way to lose the meeting is to keep blabbing go about the product and “give it all” in the prospecting call.

This leads us to the second reason.

“Selling” the meeting means there has to be an “exchange of value” for the decision makers time if they decide to meet you.

What’s in for them?

Here are examples

People won’t just meet with you because you have the coolest product.

Think of something that is important to them and offer it in return for their time.

If you’re not exchanging enough value for the appointment, they won’t meet with you.

So make it worth their time.

Sounds counterintuitive, but it happens.

You realize after the call that you actually did not ask for the meeting.

It’s not enough to explain the value exchange. Or just follow up. Or just leave voicemails. Or just retweet them and like their posts.

Ask.

When they say No to the meeting, it’s not a No for the final sale.

We’ll amaze ourselves by the appointment we will get if we’re bold enough and humble enough to ask for it.

So there we go, let’s go get those appointments.

Keep doing great work!