The Coffee Talk Meeting: The first Step in Effective Client Acquisition Part 2 in a Two Part Series

In part one, we talked about the coffee talk meeting as a co-created experience. The key is to build momentum for next – the all-important second meeting in business. Here are 10 tips to ensure you get your share of the pie in your next coffee talk meeting. 

1. Asses a client type category that you think your prospect falls into such as a Rental Car CFO, top producing commercial Real Estate Executive or Brand Director for large Pharma. This can help you get some fluency in the specific trends these folks encounter.
2. Introductions: Try it’s nice to “see you” vs. nice to “meet you” It implies more intimacy and projects confidence.
3. Check timing: ask if your contact still has the full hour that was pledged. You want to make sure you can bring your conversation to a good segue if time gets cut short.
4. Ask these three “journey” questions during your meeting for light discovery 1.) What’s been your journey? (Gets at the prospects view of their path) 2.)Where are you now? (Gets the prospect to divulge the current state) 3.)Where are you going? (Gets at goals, and potentially some dissatisfaction in the current state)
5. Take notes selectively. In your notebook, draw four rectangular boxes one over another on one page. As you hear a key point, fill in the box. Remember this is a connection meeting, not a court case.
6. Based on your journey question answers, offer to help in your own special way of authentic generosity.
7. Context is king - if your meeting is scheduled for an hour – protect the last 10 minutes like gold. Use this time to play back and clarify key points and suggest a next meeting.
8. Have one specific ask. This should be tied to what you thought the client type (prospect) could realistically help you achieve. Link the ask to the value of the current conversation and extend that to a second meeting.
9. Craft a hand-written thank you as soon as you can. Bullet your playback points as a tee-up to meeting #2.
10. A few days later, send an email follow-up that looks something like this:

 
“Hi Ellen, it was great seeing you this past Tuesday and thanks for being so generous with your time. We covered a lot of ground together but wanted to follow up on some of the things we both thought were important:
•   This is the video of my Chamber talk on messaging
•   A Whitepaper on what the best are doing around prospecting in wealth management
•   A link to my blog post on social media that I told you about. Nice tie to your team’s challenges.

Thanks also for your help in connecting me to Steve over at TKD Securities. I know we said that we’d connect at the end of the month - here are some additional dates and times for us to reconnect on the prospecting topic. Please feel free to pick one that works or suggest another.
•   June 6 – after 12p
•   June 7 – all day
•   June 13 – before 3pm
 
Thanks again, Ellen. I look forward to seeing you soon." 

If no response in two weeks, send a calendar invite with the same message above around timing flexibility. This assumes that you made firm and purposeful connections in the coffee talk meeting and the next meeting was implied and agreed upon. 

As always we value your comments and success stories. Please send all good news to bwalton@billwaltonsalestraining.com.