3/4/2025-The RIGHT first meeting approach

If you spend too much time pitching how great your company is, you’ll create uncertainty and disinterest in the prospect, no matter how great your product is.

You are selling trust in your first pitch meeting with a new prospect. (They can get your stuff anywhere.)

Your primary goal for your first/discovery meetings is to get the buyer talking and feeling comfortable sharing with you. Thus, your agenda needs to be short and tight.

Your future BFFs will open up when you ask relevant and strategic questions about their business…and them.

The more you get the buyer to talk, the smarter you’ll appear.

Follow this blueprint for your next discovery pitch meeting:

1. Research the heck out of the company. When you think you’re done, do more.

2. Follow the 3×3 question formula: Prepare three strategic questions for the meeting and review/edit them three times before the meeting.

3. Prepare personal motivation questions, such as, "What do you care most about in your role?"

4. Custom frame your value prop specifically for your new prospect.

(Notice that #1-3 above is about them, not you.)

You can’t begin to build trust as a solution provider OR be a solution provider until your buyer feels it. That means you have to truly care about where it hurts for the prospect…both for their company goals and their personal agendas.

The sales cycle requires many meetings, but the first is the most important. That’s when the buyer learns whether or not you really care about them.

Unfortunately, you play in a one-strike-and-you’re-OUT game.

If you spend too much time pitching how great your company is, you’ll create uncertainty and disinterest in the prospect, no matter how great your product is.

Even if the customer is tight-lipped and makes you go first….resist the temptation to talk long about your offering. On the other hand, don’t keep firing questions at the prospect.

It’s a balancing act.

Perfect the art of give a little, get a little…rinse and repeat.

This YT Short highlights a really good exercise that will make you focus on building buyer trust.

The recommendation is simple: track how often you ask versus tell in your pitch meetings.

Obviously, first-time discovery pitch meetings fire you up…but it’s not about you, is it?