Imagine a simple resource that helps you stand out above the crowd, gives you more credibility and facilitates more open communication with a prospect. If this resource existed, you would want to use it. Right? Right.
It always floors me that more salespeople don’t use meeting agendas. I’m not sure if they are afraid of success or if they feel an agenda will hold them back.
I know that being really prepared is hard for salespeople. Let’s be honest – most of us fell into sales straight from the back of the classroom. As a group, we don’t like to be constrained by anyone or anything. We get business done and it’s just so much easier to go into a meeting and do your thing, wing it, yada, yada, yada.
And, it’s also easy to look at your mortgage payment and be freaked out because the sales just aren’t coming like you had “planned.” Wake the hell up and start using your head!
In sales your responsibility is to the PROSPECT and the CHECK. Nothing else matters. By using an agenda, you give the prospect a clear picture of what you plan to discuss. When you send the agenda to your prospect prior to meeting, you help her prepare for the meeting; thus, placing her in a more favorable position to speak openly about HER goals so you can help her more easily buy from YOU! (Remember: it is always about them, not you).
An agenda -
- A rough plan for a meeting
- A clear list of discussion points
- An aid to keep everyone on task
- Facilitates open discussion
- Separates you from the competition
- Creates conversation before the meeting
- Says you care about THEIR time
To make life easy, take a few minutes and create two or three standard agendas. I have two different agendas templated for my own initial meetings:
- Short sales profile account
- Long sales profile account
They’re integrated into my Salesforce.com CRM as templates (Mail Merge) so that I only need to click a few buttons and I’m done. The entire process takes me about two minutes! Now, who can’t spend two minutes to make a prospect’s life better?
Here is a sample agenda used on a short sales profile account: 
