What Qualifies As A "Good" Meeting In Enterprise Sales

What one salesperson defines as a good initial meeting in enterprise sales can often be quite different from another salesperson's definition. This is natural as different people have different perspectives and definitions of success. I've found it useful to standardize the definition of a high quality meeting to remove some of this ambiguity and get everyone aligned on what success means. Here are four simple checks to determine whether or not you had a high quality initial meeting with a prospect. 

  1. Did you gain a solid understanding of the customer's buying process (who needs to be involved, where budget comes from, timeline for decisions, potential roadblocks, etc.)?
  2. Did the prospect agree to a short, weekly check-in to keep the buying process on track?
  3. Did you identify an executive sponsor and project lead?
  4. Does the prospect understand and feel some level of urgency to get to closure?

Note that of course you can still have a positive interaction and discussion with a potential customer and not do all of these things. Often it's not appropriate to get through all of this in an initial meeting. But from a pipeline velocity perspective, if you haven't accomplished these four things there's definitely some work to get done.