The first words matter more than you think

How you open a sales conversation sets the tone for everything that follows.

I just finished a two-day Win Without Pitching workshop and one thing landed really hard with this group.

It was how you set up the meeting from the very first hello. The power of sign-posting what's going to happen, telling the prospect upfront what you're doing, so there are no surprises and the client feels totally reassured they're in safe hands with someone who knows what they're doing.

Before the training, most of the people in the room would walk into a conversation and wait to be led. They wouldn't state the purpose, they wouldn't tell the client what's going to happen, they'd just begin, often winging it. And without realising it, they'd already handed over control.

What I want my 'workshoppers' to feel is something closer to a doctor sitting in their surgery. The patient has come in with a problem, with pain, with a challenge, and it's the doctor's job to set the scene, to reassure, to lead. The patient doesn't run the appointment. The doctor does.

When you set the scene, you establish yourself as the expert from the very first second. You might say something like, "We've got 30 minutes, I've got some questions for you, you'll have some for me, some of mine are going to be big ambitious questions, I hope that's okay, and at the end of this let's work out if we might be a good fit."

Just by doing that you've changed the whole nature of the relationship before a single real question has been asked.

One of the group had a sales conversation about an hour after we finished. I asked him how it went.

He said the meeting was great and then, "best of all, I felt like I was taking control."

His response gave me 'Proud Dad' vibes :)