If there’s one thing I know about selling professional services – it’s that my chances of making a sale go up exponentially if I can meet my prospect face to face. In fact in my 20+ years in business and over £20m of consulting projects sold – I’ve only ever sold one engagement (and a very small one at that) without at least one face to face client meeting.
Yet in my life as a buyer of services, I’m becoming increasingly reluctant to meet salespeople face to face. Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s that I’m increasingly used to being “in control” in other aspects of business life – especially on the internet. For whatever reason, I basically don’t want to be sold to. And I am confident enough in my knowledge of most service areas that I don’t need the “help” a salesperson to guide me.
In fact, when I recently bought some marketing information services, I selected a supplier I’d never met – but one that was prepared to provide me with all the information I requested over email. The other potential supplier insisted on trying to set up a meeting. Despite my requests for them just to tell me what I needed to know, they insisted they would need to meet me face to face to properly explain what they had to offer. As a result, I simply put off the meeting to a much later date (that will never happen) and went with the first supplier.
So should a salesperson push for a meeting with a potential client or not? There’s no easy answer to this conundrum. Obviously, the simpler, easier to specify the service is, the more possible it is to buy without a face-to-face meeting.
But the key determinant of whether a meeting will progress a sales is the attitude of the buyer. Is the buyer the sort of person who will resent a push for a meeting – or will (perhaps despite some initial resistance) it work in your favour? An experienced expert buyer is more likely to be able to buy without a meeting – but might not necessarily want to do so.
It takes skillful reading of the buyer – knowing when to push and when to back off – to navigate through this. One thing I can tell you though – don’t try to push me for a meeting.
Ian
Postscript It’s now May 2011, nearly three years after I wrote this post, and this trend has continued. In fact, it’s accelerated.
Back then, I’d only ever sold one project without meeting the client face to face. Today, almost all my coaching clients sign up after talking to me on the phone rather than meeting face to face.
Part of the change is that people are increasingly used to buying without meeting people. And part of the change, I think, is that because people do so much research on the web in advance of calling a business. In may case, theyll see my blog posts, videos, podcasts and a host of other material I’ve produced. They’ll get to see if I know my stuff – and they’ll get a feel for who I am and if they can work with me. If they can’t – they don’t call and they don’t waste their time or mine.
Ian,
I like you come from the school of face to face meetings. On the other hand with today’s technology, there is a wide range of services that can do a better and more economical job of selling without meetings. I work with organizations that believe and have proven that a well manage telephone based sales force can out sell and better service customers than a field sales force. I think most clients see the sales rep as the quarterback who can marshal those resource in their company that can best serve the client, to do that you don’t always need to be physically there to be there.
Tibor
Ian, a very thoughtful post. The conundrum you describe is only going to get more pronounced as more and more people turn to the internet as a source for services. You raise some very good questions and issues. I do think that the salesperson who can, somehow, get the face-to-face appointment will have the advantage in the end…and it takes sales skill to do that.
-Skip Anderson
Thought provoking article Ian, I am agreement with Skip in that the internet has changed some of the frontiers of engagement with regards to meeting people. There are a few clients that I work with that I have never met but maintain a good relationship with via phone and email. I do think face to face meetings are important, especially in complex sales situations, but even in these circumstances a face to face meeting doesn’t necessarily happen until an initial correspondence via email. I think with technology, there are more ways for consumers to base a judgement on whether to pursue a relationship before a face to face meeting occurs – that is why there may be more reluctance to sales people who push for meetings up front.
Ian,
I have personally used webinars to generate leads by presenting to groups and then closing all of the deals over the phone. I have found in some situations that this has allowed me to leverage my own time and efforts and is also more convenient for the customer for many of the same reasons. I am actually surprised we do not see more people using this technique today.
Hi Brad – I think it’s coming, but slowly.
Broadcast methods already work best when trying to get potential clients to “hold up their hands” to express interest – as you can leverage your time more effectively. But if you’re gunning for one specific high value client it would still be ideal and more impactful to meet them face to face – provided they’re comfortable with that.
Ian
To some extend i do agree, with the the experiences of Mr.Ian. But i feel for best results, first we have to pave the way for the meeting. Some clients may be reluctant to meet, first. So keep in touch via other means of communicatios. So that when you request for a meeting, they feel it difficult to refuse the request.
Ali Hassan.