Meetings Best Practices

Article author
Brandan Blevins
Updated

Follow Apollo meetings best practices.

Overview

You've prospected effectively and booked meetings with prospects. Are you ready to crush those meetings and convert them into closed deals?

The following sections detail the best practices that Apollo recommends to effectively handle the before, during, and after of your sales meetings.

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Prepare for Meetings

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
-Benjamin Franklin

Everyone has been invited to meetings without agendas or clear goals, and everyone has inevitably felt frustration when those meetings feel unproductive and unorganized. Don't make the mistake of being unprepared!

If a prospect has shown enough interest in your product to book a meeting, you should prepare in a manner that shows the prospect you are ready to answer their questions and address their concerns.

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Set Meeting Objectives

To ensure that both you and the prospects can align on the discussion to come, add the following items to your calendar invite:

  • Objectives: These are specific goals of a meeting. Outline what you want to achieve by the end of the conversation. For example, if you want to demo a certain feature that the prospect indicated to be of interest, you could state "Demo feature X and ensure your team understands how it solve problems Y and Z."
  • Agenda: This is structured outline of topics to be covered during the meeting. The agenda should list topics in the order of importance to the prospect, and should include realistic time allocations for each item to ensure that you don't spend the entire meeting discussing a single point. If you are co-hosting the meeting, specify whether you or a colleague will be delivering each portion of the agenda.
  • Pre-read: This is a document that provides key information and context about the topics to be discussed, such as links to landing pages on your corporate website that cover certain topics or details about security certifications your company holds that might be critical for prospects to gather before they can move forward with the purchasing process. A pre-read enables prospects to prepare for the conversation with you and ensures that your agenda doesn't stall on certain topics.

Setting clear objectives for a meeting ensures that you can use the time efficiently. And, by providing prospects a clear agenda in advance, they can reshape the conversation in advance and avoid frustration during the meeting.

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Understand the Prospect

If you've never met a prospect, take the time to research their potential needs and wants. Identify the prospect's job title, company, and industry, then compare those demographics to your products to determine which pain points they are likely trying to solve. When a prospect fits an established persona for your product, utilize talk tracks to prepare yourself for the conversation.

You should also explore their online activity. In particular, focus on recent LinkedIn activity such as posts and interactions with others' posts. These details can provide a clearer picture of a prospect's priorities and interests. You can use a combination of AI power-ups and workflows in Apollo to automate repetitive activities like researching online activity and summarizing LinkedIn posts.

If you are preparing for a follow-up meeting, leverage the knowledge gained from past interactions with the contact to better prepare for the conversation. Whether in conversation transcripts or your CRM notes, you should identify the following items and prepare to discuss them:

  • Action items: Ensure that you have either resolved all of the action items that were assigned to you in the previous meeting, or have documented a plan to resolve them. Add the action items to the agenda and allocate time to discuss them.
  • Objections: Address any lingering objections from the prospect. Again, add objections to the meeting agenda and set aside enough time to adequately address them. When possible, you should also add information in the pre-read that provides context to the prospect's objections.
 
Get Insight a Prospect's Mind

Apollo provides pre-meeting insights that can help you prepare for a meeting more efficiently. Insights can include learning about a company's priorities, identifying decision makers in a meeting, and summarizing objections from previous meetings. Check out Research and Prepare for Upcoming Meetings to learn more.

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Understand the Broader Business Context

You should also familiarize yourself with the prospect's business. In addition to researching the prospect's company and products, you should pay attention to the broader business context in which they operate.

Research the following items in advance of a meeting to gain a better understand of the prospect's needs and pain points:

  • Major industry news
  • Competitor announcements
  • Hiring in areas of the business related to your products
  • Recent funding rounds that have closed
  • Buying intent for product categories related to your own
  • The company's current tech stack

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Identify Stakeholders

As part of your pre-meeting research, you should research the account to identify the stakeholders and their roles in the buying process. It is more difficult to close deals when you don't know which contacts in the account are actually making purchasing decisions, which are influencing those decisions, and which are actually not invested in the process.

Stakeholder mapping is also critical first step in your multithreading efforts. Later, when you are meeting with prospects, those efforts will include expanding and refining your list of stakeholders as you ask questions during meetings.

The following guidance will help you discern between the different buyer roles:

Buyer Role Description Common Phrases
Decision-maker This is the contact that retains final authority over whether a purchase is approved. They need to weigh the available options and assess the consequences for their organization in purchasing a product, though they might not actually use the product themselves. If a contact is seeking a consensus among their team on a decision, they are likely the decision-maker of the group.

As part of the discovery process, you should determine which contact on an account is the decision-maker as you will not be able to close the deal without their approval.
"How much is this going to cost? We'll need to see if this aligns with our budget."

"What kind of ROI do your customers typically see within a year?"

"How long does the implementation process take?"

"Does anyone on my team have a concern about moving forward with the proposal?"
Champion The champion sees the value in your product and wants to move forward with the purchase. They can influence colleagues during the buying process. Due to their personal investment in purchasing your product, they might be willing to feed you inside information that can help you influence others, such as internal KPIs that show how your product is expected to address business needs and information about competitors that are being considered. "I think this feature will really help resolve one of our biggest problems."

"This product is much better at data reporting than some of the competitors I've assessed."

"This feature will make our jobs so much easier!"
Influencer An influencer can help persuade team mates that purchasing your product is the right choice, but unlike the champion, they are not going to actively support your product or serve as an internal advocate for you. During meetings, influencers will focus on the potential impact to the team and the organization. "Our team wants to do more data reporting. What capabilities does your product offer in that area?"

"I'd like to follow up on your point about that feature. Is this going to cause headaches for our accounting team?"

"Can you explain how this integrates with our current software? We don't want to spend time duplicating work."
Product User These contacts will actually be the ones implementing and using your product. They might not have the influence of a champion during the initial buying process, but their experiences and frustrations will influence contract renewals. During meetings, they will want to understand how your product addresses their own pain points and proof via case studies, testimonials, and customer success examples. "I'm interested, but I need to discuss with my team."

"How does your product address my current challenges?"

"How will I benefit from using this product?"

"We're currently using a competitor product, and it can't do data reporting the way I want. Is your product any better in that area?"/td
Gatekeeper A gatekeeper controls access to decision-makers. They might screen the decision-makers calls and emails, which means you can't access the contacts you need without first winning their approval. You should be prepared to provide concise information that explains why your product is important to the decision-maker and the business. "My manager is very busy. What does this call pertain to?"

Prospects might occupy multiple roles, such as a champion being a decision-maker or a user being an influencer. The sooner you can identify each prospect's role, the better you can address their specific pain points and move deals forward.

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Build Trust During Meetings

You've thoroughly prepared for the meeting. Now it's time to engage the prospect in meaningful conversation.

Apollo interviewed many sales experts, thought leaders, and everyday practitioners to better understand why certain sales teams close deals and others lose deals. Across conversations, these sales figures repeatedly indicated that you need to build trust with prospects in order to successfully close deals. The following guidance will help you build trust during your meetings.

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Be Present in the Moment

Sorry, I was a bit distracted. What did you say?

-Too many people in too many meetings

Focus entirely on the meeting participants. You should engage in active listening, which means fully engaging in the conversation and paying attention to both verbal and non-verbal cues. When a prospect says something, show genuine interest in their statement, then follow up with questions that show you understand their point.

To help engage more effectively, shut down your email, phone, messaging services, and anything else that is going to distract you from learning about the prospect and their pain points. You should also avoid taking notes manually if possible. Modern technology enables you to easily record conversations and have them transcribed, summarized, and analyzed using AI tools.

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Multithreading More Effectively

Multithreading is an account-based prospecting technique where you build multiple relationships across your target personas within an account. Research cited in the book Outbound Sales shows that there is a direct correlation between the number of buyers participating in a deal and the monetary amount of the deal.

Translation: to close bigger deals, you need to be multithreading more effectively!

Ideally, multithreading efforts should start during pre-meeting preparation, when you are identifying stakeholders. Research accounts thoroughly to determine reporting structures and relationships among different teams. Multithreading ensures that you have another thread to help push a deal forward when one thread stalls.

When you're meeting with a prospect, stay focused on building out relationships across the account:

  • Ask the right questions: Once you've built rapport during a conversation, ask the prospect questions that will help you determine who else should be involved in the buying process. Ultimately, you want to better understand how decisions are made within the organization, and identify champions that are invested in pushing the deal forward.
    • "Who else in your organization needs to be involved with this decision?"
    • "Which member of your team is going to approve the purchase?"
    • "Which members of your organization are going to be using this product most frequently?"
  • Identify more stakeholders: As you ask questions about the decision-making process, add to your list of stakeholders and update their roles in the process. Determine which stakeholders you should include in future meetings, and to which you want to send follow-up communications after the meeting.
  • Action plan: If you haven't already created an action plan, do so after the meeting. Add all stakeholders to the action plan and assign to-do items to the relevant participants. This helps in holding each other accountable on taking the next steps, and actively involves more contacts from the account in the buying process.

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Address Objections and Competitors

Before meetings, you should prepare talking points related to common objections from buyers as well as your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. During calls, address objections as soon as they arise to ensure they don't linger in the buyer's mind.

The following objections are some of the most commonly encountered:

Objection Example Response
Existing Vendor

We're happy with the current product we have in place.
I understand that. Would you be willing to share a little about why you're happy with that product? We might be able to address the gaps left by that product more effectively.
Budget Concerns

The product sounds interesting, but I'm really not sure we can make it work financially.
Well, we do have some different pricing options that could fit your current budget. How about I walk you through the the solutions available at each price point and how they can eliminate your team's pain points?
Not the Right Contact

I like what the product has to offer, but I can't make purchasing decisions.
Definitely understand that. Would your manager be the right person to talk with? Or someone else in your org? Maybe you could send an introductory email to connect us.

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Follow Up After Meetings

Even a wildly successful meeting does not lead directly decisions from buyers. Complex B2B purchases especially require several rounds of follow-up communications and more meetings.

This means you should be prepared to send more emails across the account, dial more numbers, and use learnings from the meetings to prepare for the next meeting.

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Craft Personalized Follow-up Communications

As soon as possible, use the meeting transcript and notes to write highly personalized follow-up emails to the attendees. Follow-up emails should include the following items:

  • Meeting summary and action items: Provide a brief summary of the meeting, including the topics that were covered and any action items that were assigned. This summary can be used as the basis for the next meeting's agenda.
  • Objections and pain points: If you did not adequately answer concerns during the call, be sure to follow up with more concrete details that addresses the buyer's objections, and emphasize how your product can address their team's pain points.
  • Gratitude: Always express your gratitude to the buyer for attending the meetings and taking time from their day to discuss your product.

Keep your follow-up emails brief. The ultimate goal for follow-up communications is not to thoroughly document every detail of a meeting, but to ensure that the buyer is receiving the information they need to feel comfortable moving forward with the process.

 
Lighting Fast Follow-up

Do you struggle to remember all of the pertinent details of a meeting when writing a follow-up email? Fear not, Apollo has your back. When you enable Apollo to record your conversations, Apollo's AI analyzes the meeting transcript and crafts personalized follow-up emails for you.

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Perform Interactive Discovery and Sentiment Analysis

Even when you commit to active listening and are present during a meeting, it can be difficult to assess the subtleties of a buyer's responses and your own tone. If you are part of a sales team, ask your manager and teammates to assess your calls and help spot the weak points in your sales pitch.

Beyond the human touch, AI offers opportunities to coach yourself and perform sentiment analysis on your calls. Use Apollo's ask anything AI or another AI tool to query your meeting transcripts and those of your teammates. The following AI prompts can help you pinpoint the areas you need to improve:

  • Did I fail to address any of the buyer's questions?
  • How would you describe the buyer's tone throughout the call?
  • Did the buyer seem to favor a competitor's product more than mine?
  • (When assessing several conversation recordings) What were the most common objections buyers surfaced across these calls? Did my teammates adequately address the objections?

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Learn More

Want to perfect your outbound sales approach? Check out the book Outbound Sales, written by Apollo's own Josh Garrison and informed by dozens of sales leaders and reps. Josh will help refine your approach to the outbound sales process and book more meetings!

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