9 Questions to Ask your Avatar in the FIRST Meeting
Eventually, once you’ve done the research, drug yourself through the background work, properly imagined your avatar as the ideal customer, you’ll end up with a meeting on the books. You’re nervous. Sweating. Anxious for this half-hour call to go well because you know you might not get another chance. This is the moment when your avatar becomes a real person you’re having an actual conversation with.
You’ve done the pre-meeting work. What now?
First, it’s important to keep in mind the goal of your initial meeting.
The goal is NOT…
To close a sale
To get a firm commitment
To sell at all!
The goal is…
To gain situational clarity
To understand how you can help
To understand the client’s current issues and challenges
To see if there is a potential for a future partnership
I love this phrase “situational clarity”. I borrowed it from my coach and have been using it like gangbusters ever since. It helps me put things in the right perspective. I’m not selling; I’m understanding. The goal, above all, is to understand the situation the client (or potential client at this point) is in. What are their problems, challenges, priorities, and timelines? How can I come into that and be helpful? Until this first meeting, I really don’t know. And since I’ve only got 20-30 minutes typically, I need to use that time well to get the information I need to move forward or not.
And this isn’t just for you. It’s for the client. They may not be aware of what they need any more than you. Asking the following 9 questions will help you BOTH gain situational clarity on what needs to happen next. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had clients thank me after the initial meeting because I’ve helped them realize what they need to do next. And, often, my role in that makes me an invaluable member of the team -- someone they need to be there moving forward. So I’ve made the beginning of a sale without once thinking about selling. Bada bing bada boom.
Without further ado, here are the 9 questions I ask in every initial meeting:
What are your top three priorities?
Which priorities are time sensitive?
What happens if these priorities aren’t completed?
Let’s talk about when you first started to think about this project, what happened?
What research or competitors have you spoken with so far?
What steps have you taken towards solving the problem?
Who else needs to be aware and involved in this conversation? Whose opinion matters when it comes to decision-making?
Have you set milestones for what needs to be done? What’s the timeline?
Why now? Why are you having this meeting with me instead of someone else? What’s compelling about what we can offer you?
Granted, one of these questions might garner a pretty long answer. You may not have time to get to all of them in a half-hour call. BUT, that means the conversation is going well. It’s flowing, you’re vibing. Not getting to all the questions is a sure-fire invitation for a next meeting, or at least a detailed follow-up via email.
As we’ve talked about before, don’t leave the meeting with a boring, “Thanks for your time, talk to you later” vibe. Make sure you schedule a follow-up call, ask permission to email, discuss next steps in concrete ways and keep that initial energy moving forward.
Best of luck -- knock ‘em dead!
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Keywords
Sales | Sales Professional | Sales Skills | Sales Hacks | Avatar | Close Deals | Research | Organization | Sales Habits
We have had quite the ride this fall exploring the many angles of avatars. I admit that avatars are much more useful than I had initially realized. In fact, I didn’t even fully understand how often I was using this concept in my own work. And now, I’m more excited than ever to keep integrating this tool into my sales processes to close more deals and help more people get what they need to succeed.