One important aspect about widening the placement of products or coverage area of services that will be rendered by companies is to finalize an agreement with the prospective hosts. Deals can only be consummated after successful talks with the executives for the said places, and the steps to consider prior to considering thinking about racking up their potential revenue will have to take a backseat for the meantime that nothing concrete has been reached. There is no harm in fantasizing and forecasting the possibilities, but a check with reality should include that unless something has been agreed to by both parties, nothing is definite at the moment.
Above all, there are various ways that a corporate representative should consider before the actual meeting with the other side. Among them:
- Focus on the Purpose of the Meeting
- Be Confident about your product or service
- Prepare alternative proposals and be aware of modifications that will surely be reached at points where haggling is a sure occurrence
- Dress Neatly and Professionally
- Retain a cheerful atmosphere once the meeting has started.
- Be prepared for intimidation approaches
- Analyze the potential of the deal and determine if the talks are getting anywhere
- Start and finish the meeting with a courteous greeting and handshake.
Most experienced people would agree, these are situational instances where most of them have already been experienced and handled with properly. The key to all is personality assessment of the person that they will be talking to. The inability of lack of proper assessment of the behavior, reception and tactics of such potential business partners will at most time lead to a dead end, becoming a useless meeting with no results to expect and a total waste of time.
Professionalism in the business sense stems from the ability of a person to properly deliver towards their clients the entire purpose of the meeting and the product or service background as well. Questions shall be thrown left and right and like a boxing match, the representative should be ready to receive and counter these hurled jabs to the product and service capacity. Communication assessment must also be considered, for the fact that questions may be asked here and there, but the relative importance of these queries as well as the actual intent of the listener in these cases must be readily evaluated so as to immediately determine if the talks are worth the time, or simply dilly dallying to fool around. It is in these cases that straight answers are highly appreciated. Rude as it may seem to other people, the bottom line is that time will no longer be wasted, allowing the people to bring their proposal elsewhere, where most probably something more worth their time can be expected, rather than wasting it on groups that have no intention of resolving and coming up with a win-win situation for both their benefits. Straightforward as it may seem, but in the corporate world, a side of mental interpretation is also something key in closing a deal. Only a number of gifted working professionals are able to do the same, while for some, persistence may be the way to go.
Links and References:
- Sales Meetings-Techniques for Selling Cars
- Watching Your Step, Sales Success Four Simple Ways to Making Your Meeting a Success
- Meeting Planners complain loudly about Hotel Sales People
- How to Conduct an Effective Sales Meeting
- All About Retail Point of Sale
Originally posted on September 22, 2006 @ 6:46 am