Conducting engaging and effective customer meetings is crucial for fostering strong relationships, and trust and achieving everyone’s business goals. Best practices to ensure your meetings are productive, engaging, and memorable include:
Start with introductions – allow time for introductions and for identifying everyone’s role and expectations during the meeting. This helps establish rapport and sets a collaborative tone for the meeting.
Reiterate the agenda – take time to go over the agenda (one set prior to the meeting – see ‘Preparing For Customer Meetings’, AgriTalk November 2024), to ensure everyone is on the same page regarding what will happen and the discussion points previously agreed upon. Be prepared to adapt as and if needed. Priorities change and needs change, when customers want to discuss different topics, there must be a good reason behind it. Adjust the agenda to accommodate and prioritize their request.
Focused discussions - keep discussions on track by steering conversations back to the agenda when they deviate off-topic. Use techniques like a "parking lot" list for off-topic items that can be addressed later. However, do this only once you have verified that the ‘off-topic’ is not of immediate importance to your customer
Address specific pain points - identify and highlight the specific challenges or goals relevant to each meeting participant. Ask relevant questions and provide relevant examples. Tailor your message to show how what you offer can relate to your customers’ needs and how you can help address their unique needs and/or problems.
Foster communication by asking open-ended questions. “What have you tried?”, “How did that work for you?”, “What else have you done?“ and “What was the outcome …..?. Such questions will help you gain deeper insights into your customers’ specific challenges.
Invite feedback and discussion – helps to remove bias and assumption and therefore provides clarity and direction. A great way to demonstrate how much you truly care about what they think and do and how much you value their inputs.
Plan for follow-up - before concluding the meeting, summarise the key points, highlighting any agreements or decisions made, to reinforce understanding. Also identify clear action items (who, will do what, by when) for both you and your client. This ensures that both parties know what to expect moving forward and helps maintain momentum after the meeting.
Post-meeting review - after the meeting concludes (the sooner the better), review what went well and what you could improve for better outcomes for future meetings.
In the January 2025 AgriTalk, we will consider how effective follow-up after each meeting contributes to the overall success of your business relationships and sales processes.
Do you need help to get the most out of customer meetings, or want to find out more about upskilling your team’s commercial skills? Reach out to us for an inside to the 7Cs Selling Process and Workshops which we have specifically designed for Animal Nutrition and Animal Health customer-facing professionals. Please contact us at info@progressus.asia, or +66(0)613935776 for a one-on-one private and confidential discussion.
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