How should we reach out to the people on the committee?
Your goal in dealing with the committee is not to walk in unprepared, but rather to do the necessary work up-front to reach out to all the members of the group before your meeting. This may mean a long series of phone calls, e-mails, and even face-to-face meetings before your committee presentation. Only you can determine whether this investment of time and effort is worth it. However, in deals that carry high price tags, it is quite common for a committee to deliver the final recommendation, and it may well be worth identifying the key players and discussing their priorities ahead of time.
Keep your contact in the loop on all your discussions, unless you have a good strategic reason for doing otherwise.
Can you and I set up a time to debrief right now?
The point here is to secure the Next Step with your prospect before you actually make your presentation to the committee. If the prospect is unwilling to schedule a time to meet with you after the meeting, there is a very good chance that there is some deal-killing obstacle or difficulty that you have not yet uncovered.
Let’s say it’s March 1. The committee is meeting on March 15, and you will be making your presentation to them at that point. It is incumbent upon you, right now, to set up a Next Step with your prospect—and schedule a meeting with him, or with someone else in the organization, to debrief on how the committee meeting went. That meeting might be scheduled for, say, March 17.
What you do not want to do is allow the meeting to conclude without some kind of Next Step in your prospect’s calendar.
Remember, this is a series of exchanges. You are trading your knowledge, insights, and expertise for ongoing commitments of time and attention. Do not invest heavily without receiving a parallel investment from the other side.
What do you think (person X) will think about what we’ve put together?
If you can, you should pose this question about every committee member you are able to identify.
How many good copies should I put together/bring?
A good way of determining the number of people on the committee, if for some reason your prospect has been vague about it up to this point.
Just between you and me, what do you think the result of the meeting is going to be?
A question best asked “informally,” near the end of your meeting with the prospect.
Now—let’s assume that the prospect really is interested in moving forward in the sales process with you, but for some legitimate reason can’t manage to get you in front of the group to make the presentation yourself (Perhaps the “committee” is a formal gathering, such as the annual meeting of a board of directors, and outsiders are not allowed.) In this situation, you should still ask:
Can I put together a first draft of the presentation for you?
The point is to get some kind of input into what will actually be discussed at the meeting. Building the PowerPoint deck for your prospect (or its initial draft) is an excellent way to do this.
You should also volunteer to put together the agenda and any other support materials for the meeting.
Do not rely on your prospect’s memory of your proposal to guide his or her discussions before the committee. Let’s face it, sometimes things do get lost in translation. (One of our company’s trainers has a saying that encapsulates this fact of business life concisely and accurately: “People barely communicate.”)
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