Accountants, do you hate ‘Sales Meetings’?

accountants clients sales meetings Jul 23, 2020

Do you hate having those sales meetings with prospects?

If you do, you're not alone. The thing is, we as accountants, we weren't trained to sell. We were never coached in how to sell and therefore it's not a surprise that, in a prospect meeting, we feel uncomfortable.

So today, I wanna share with you some ways that can help to change your mindset when you're having those prospect meetings to enable you to be more comfortable when you are meeting with prospects.

So firstly, it requires a mindset shift and this mindset shift can be had when you appreciate that we don't need to sell. What we need to do is to allow people to buy, and when we do that, it completely changes the way we behave in a prospect meeting because we no longer have to try and sell what we are offering to our prospect. We just need to position ourselves as someone that can help them in their journey, as the expert, as the guide, and let them come to the conclusion that we are the right fit for them. So some of the ways we can do that are as follows:

  • Give ideas to the prospect that you're seeing, in terms of how you work with your clients, how they can save tax, how they can structure themselves to achieve their profit targets.
  • Demonstrate with numbers how you can put more money in their bank account, be it through your assistance with helping them with their pricing, on helping them with growing their profits, on helping them with saving tax so they get more money in their pocket than they have done previously.
  • Demonstrate with the amount of time you can save them so if you taking on board their bookkeeping, looking after their finance function, that's gonna save them hours and hours, and how much is that worth to them? So give these ideas and show them the value of working with you.
  • Another way you can be relaxed in a sales meeting is to give the client options so do not be afraid to have the price conversation in person. In fact, I'd recommend you absolutely must have the price conversation in person with your prospect. The reason being is that you are the only one that can communicate all the great value that you and your team can offer.

No matter how bad you might think you are at sales, you're much better than an Outlook email or a Word document, so you absolutely must have that conversation in person, so you can not only communicate all the value you offer but also be there to answer any objections that the client prospect may have. So when you're having that price conversation, you can give options, you can work collaboratively with the prospect to build a package of services that's right for them.

Give them the option to choose rather than forcing them to buy the only thing that you have to sell. Make it bespoke to their particular requirements, and these days, with the tech around us, we are absolutely able to do that.

And lastly, inspire the prospect to take action by talking about case studies by people who are similar to them. Show them how you've helped them, how you've helped them to get from where they were to where they are now. Demonstrate that through the case studies that you have built up which shows them the social proof and gives them that comfort that working with you is the right way to move forward. So hopefully that's helped to give you a steer on how to run prospect meetings.