The Value Audition-Earning Your Role in Their Story

For as long as anyone can remember, salespeople open a first meeting with a ploy to create credibility. To execute this tactic, the salesperson will start the conversation by talking about their company. It was thought that the customer would need to trust the company to buy from them. Because this might not always be enough, the salesperson would talk about their happy clients, adding additional proof. What followed was, and still is for many, positioning the company’s product of services.

Today, all the information a buyer may need about your company and offerings is contained and organized on your organization’s website. Reciting what your client can find in less than two clicks is the same as reading them a brochure out loud. This approach is responsible for salespeople failing to acquire a second meeting. It is also why salespeople complain that their prospective clients ghost them.

First meetings are far too important to alienate buyers and decision makers. Your contacts need a different conversation, so you need to use a strategy that doesn’t repel them. Your first meeting is a value audition, so to pass you must create value. A contact who doesn’t experience value creation in the first meeting will not be interested in wasting more time in a second meeting.

How to Pass the Value Audition

When salespeople rely on crutches designed by marketing and product managers, their conversations feel like a pitch. What is worse is that prospective clients don’t get what they need from a meeting. One reason this approach endures is that most sales organizations don’t know there are better ways to conduct a first meeting.

To pass the value audition you must use a strategy that gives the client what they need. Every sales scenario is a contest between a salesperson and their competitors. The way to win is to ensure the client gets what they want and need. If your sales managers are afraid to take away the crutches because they fear doing so will harm their results, help them understand that the modern sales approach will improve their teams’ ability to create value and convert a first meeting into a second meeting.

Our sales methodology is called Level 4 Value Creation. Our version of a first meeting begins with the salesperson providing an executive briefing that covers the forces and trends that create challenges or provide opportunities. Explaining these headwinds and tailwinds creates value for the client because it helps them understand why they are experiencing problems that prevent them producing the outcomes they need.

This approach helps salespeople pass the value audition in the following ways:

1. It creates value for the prospective client in the first minute of the first meeting. By removing the legacy approaches and creating value, you differentiate yourself from your competitors.
2. You look and sound like a person who has experience, expertise, and knowledge to share with the client, proving you can help your contacts and stakeholders make an informed buying decision.
3. Done well, the executive briefing will start a conversation about why the client will need to make changes to improve their results.
4. Having created value in the first meeting is enough to prove that your client can trust you to create value in the second meeting.

Earning Your Role in Their Story

Your prospective clients are auditioning salespeople to take on the role of a trusted advisor. They are interested in a sales rep’s ability to share information about their company and their offerings. Prospective clients want to be sure a salesperson is consultative enough to help them improve their results.

If you have left a first meeting without confirming a second meeting, you have failed the audition. The same is true if your contact tells you to call them next week to schedule something. You may not know what you did to prevent a second meeting, but it probably had something to do with your approach.

To prove that a salesperson is capable of being a trusted advisor, they must know more than their contacts about the challenges their prospective client is facing. Without being able to explain the problems’ root causes and implications, a salesperson will struggle to convert a second meeting. B2B salespeople who are not interested in business will need to change their approach to succeed in sales.

To earn your role in your client’s story, you must do the reading and the research. You must be One-Up, meaning you can create value for your clients and help them understand what they need to know to change and improve their results. A salesperson that is One-Down will demonstrate that they cannot be trusted to help clients make the best decision to produce the results they need.

See Elite Sales Strategies: A Guide to Being One-Up, Creating Value, and Becoming Truly Consultative.

The Value Audition: Earning Your Role in Their Story

To be sure, the first meeting is simply an audition. Your contact is not sitting down with you to buy what you sell. Instead, they are giving you a short period of time to show what you know and whether or not you can help them. What your contacts are looking for is an expert that can sit next to them and explain the decisions they need to make to improve their results.

Every so often, I hear from salespeople and sales trainers who claim that nothing has changed in B2B sales. Those of us who have sold long enough find it easy to identify the changes in B2B sales. One major trend is that buyers and decision makers seek a salesperson with a high level of insight and expertise that will help solve their problems. Being consultative can help clients feel certain about their decisions to change.

Here is a test you can use to determine how you are doing: In your next couple of meetings, notice whether your contacts respond in a way that indicates what you are sharing is valuable to them. When we ask for a first meeting, we ask for 25 minutes, knowing that we will pass the test and will still be sitting across from the client at the end of the hour.