The Sales-Killing Mistake People Make Before They Even Meet With Clients

Raise your Sales Success Rate by Avoiding this One Big Mistake.
by Matt Handal, Guest Author

Have you ever had a meeting with a potential client that just went south? The client looked at you like you were crazy or maybe stopped it earlier than you hoped.  You’re left wondering what happened. You did everything right. You had your message. You had the right material. But something clearly went wrong.
 
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could prevent these kinds of client meeting disasters? You can, but only if you stop making one big mistake.  
 
Whether you're a seasoned business development or marketing professional, or someone just beginning a career in BD, a bit of wisdom can help you avoid mistakes that could not only kill a sale but also your career. 
 
Read more as Matt Handal - seasoned marketer, author, speaker and guest blogger at the BD Blog - shares an experience about when a client threatened to walk out of a meeting he was in and explains what that one big mistake is and how you can avoid it.
 
This Client Meeting Went South Real Quick 

I am Matt Handal and it was 2001. It was the post-Y2K era. Cell facilities and data centers were popping up all over the place. Nobody predicted the impending “dotcom” bubble bursting.
 
I was working for a mechanical/electrical/plumbing designer. I was the marketing coordinator for their pharmaceutical and central utilities groups.
 
We had arranged a meeting with the director of construction for a large pharmaceutical client that we hadn’t worked with before. They were planning a new research lab building. And we thought their director was coming in to hear us pitch.
 
We had our pitch well planned. The pitch revolved around what we called “six nines.” That’s an electrical and mechanical system that was up 99.9999% of the time. This is the kind of reliability data centers required because they have to run 24 hours a day.
 
This pitch was really going to impress our client. And I was going to sit there and watch our lead designers and senior vice president knock this guy’s socks off.
 
The Client And The Curveball 

But then the potential client showed up. He had a roll of preliminary drawings under his arm. He walked into our conference room, rolled out the drawings onto the table, and proclaimed, “Here’s my project. What do you guys think?”
 
Nobody was prepared for that. I saw my guys squirm. The senior vice president started explaining the “six nines” and how that would benefit his project.
 
“We really don’t need that,” he explained as he pointed to a closet that was to hold the handful of servers the research team needed.
 
So my boss rambled a little more. But then he went back to his pre-determined pitch, the six nines.
 
The client started to look frustrated. I had to save my boss. I thought that we needed to shift this conversation...and we needed to shift it quick. Six nines is for data centers. This guy is focused on the research aspects, I thought to myself.
 
So, I did something that, in retrospect, wasn’t the wisest thing to do. I, the fresh-faced boy who had never pitched a client, opened my mouth.
 
“Well,” I said to my boss. “Maybe you can explain the types of facilities that need six nines and those that might not.”
 
I had done it. Now my boss could take that and pivot away from the six nines. I imagined myself being paraded around the office by my peers for saving the day.
 
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” my boss said to me with a straight face.
 
Then the client said something I will never forget.
 
“If I hear about six nines one more time, I’m going to take these drawing and walk out the door.”
 
The Breakthrough Concept 

It wasn’t until years later that I truly understood what we did wrong. And it’s a mistake that I see people making on a regular basis.  It’s based on a concept that seems easy enough to understand but is extremely difficult to believe.
 
You can’t create a desire for your service or product.
 
Let me repeat that in a different way. You can’t sell someone something they don’t already want. You can only align their existing desires with your service or product.  That’s very hard to believe because you probably think people sell us stuff we don’t want all the time, right!? We’ve all heard about people who can sell water to a fish and prescription glasses to a blind man.
 
Well, it doesn’t work like that. Want to test it? Try to sell me some cat food. I don’t have a cat. I’m not going to eat cat food. Try to sell me cat food.
 
Looking back at our meeting, the client didn’t desire increased reliability. To make matters worse, we had no idea what he desired. Truth be told, we didn’t care what he desired. We had a bullet in the chamber and we were determined to fire it.  
 
Are You Making This Fatal Sales Mistake? 

Over the last 15 years, I’ve seen people make that fatal mistake over and over again. They develop their sales message, load it into the chamber of their gun, and run around trying to shoot clients.
 
They make no effort to find out or even consider their potential clients’ hopes, fears, and dreams (i.e. their existing desires). And since they aren’t aligning their sales message to those hopes, fears, and dreams...they end up trying to sell the client something they don’t desire.
 
Sure, if you search long enough, you’ll find some blind man that wants to buy prescription glasses. Maybe he just likes the way wearing prescription glasses makes him feel. But 99.9999% of the blind men you try to sell to simply won’t buy. Some will even get annoyed with you.
 
Raise Your Sales Success Rate 

If your sales message does not consider the hopes, fear, and dreams of your potential clients...selling is going to be difficult for you. You’ll meet such resistance that you’ll probably hate doing it.  But if you align your sales message with what your clients truly desire, selling will be far easier and you’ll be far more successful.
 
Now, you can always hire someone to uncover the hopes, fears, and dreams of your clients. Or you can do it yourself by meeting with potential clients.
 
If you want to tackle this yourself and would like a head start, check out my post on the exact scripts I use to get meetings with extremely busy people.

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About the Author

Matt Handal was a marketer submitting boilerplate proposals and materials that were indistinguishable from his competitors'. He had no idea how to convince new clients to buy his firm's services. And worst of all, nobody would listen to him.
 
One day, he stumbled upon some academic research on how people really make decisions. Since then, he’s helped his firm beat incumbents, convinced government clients to give his firm sole source contracts, written one of the most popular books about proposal writing, and people even fly him across the country to teach them how to apply Mind Marketing to their business.

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