Paul Shouse

Vice President of Sales Americas at NICE Systems

First Meeting Agendas

Would love to hear different examples of what you or your team does to prepare for first meetings and more importantly.... can you describe how your first meetings go in general.....Go!

Do you Pitch or Q&A for first meetings?

Attached poll

22%

Pitch

78%

Q&A

🎈 Mentorship

🏰 War Stories

20 comments

Sort by:

BmajoR

Arsonist

Account Executive

I lump both together in the first call. 10-15 spent on disco then product demo and disco keeps going throughout the call.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

Disco first. ALWAYS.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Seriously. Never a slide deck.

oldcloser

Arsonist

💀

Yes, questions, yes, but no interrogations, no bright lights, no water boarding. Just well thought out questions. Dig dig dig. You'll know you've done it right when you get that thing... that audible gasp... that comes right before the true confession of pain. You've convinced them that YOU are worthy of the truth. Then, thank them for their transparency.
You get the gasp, you've earned the right to solve it.

SaaSyBee

Politicker

Founder

I mainly ask questions and then (probably less subtly than I think I am) I tie pains back to solutions.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

Intros- Clients Current State- Future State- What needs to be done to get there- Client Story- Set next steps

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

If you're not asking questions, you're going to be wondering why you didn't get the sale.
Q&A and a pitch that responds to the problems they have that you solve, but that you wouldn't know about if you didn't ask.

kneehigh

Politicker

Senior Enterprise AE

Depends but first call I only just do q&a but I’m in enterprise sales and the sales cycle is 9-12 months. Key in good discovery calls is to get current situation, future “ideal situation” they are looking for and get them to pull out all the reasons/roadblocks why they can’t get there…then the usual sales101 question BANT etc and schedule a demo with the key people if you have enough pain points to address with your solution

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

Bravado's Resident Asshole

I mean, it's a mixture of both honestly.

coletrain

Politicker

Account Executive

Should mostly be Q&A IMO with some light pitch throughout

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

You do both…

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

Purely disco to understand the why's

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

I’m fortunate that when people engage my company we all basically know what it’s all about. So the agenda is mostly Q&A.

But if you do a good initial outreach, then it’s going to be a Q&A session anyway. I only pitch when we know a lot about the customer.

SoccerandSales

Big Shot

Account Executive

A little of both is typically necessary

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

Truly I try to let them do most of the talking with finding pain and asking questions about the problems the pain causes. That's when people start to trust you and all that jazz, usually when you get there it's really easy to show how you can ease the pain (or say it's on the roadmap)

kittychachas

Valued Contributor

VP/Director of Sales

Walk through a deck with them and ask them questions while presenting. It’s a conversation to see if it’s a mutually good fit instead of pure discovery or pure pitching.

Enterprise SaaS. We have a niche product in a niche industry.

pirate

Big Shot

🦜☠️ Account Executive

Discovery

GDO

Politicker

BDM

How can you pitch unless you know the prospect and their pains

Beans

Big Shot

Enterprise Account Executive

Can't pitch til you know what problem you're solving.
Pitch call 2.

saaskicker

Celebrated Contributor

Enterprise AE

What is your desired outcome after your first call? This should dictate the agenda and flow of your initial discovery.

Bravado is a community of trusted sales professionals endorsed by their customers.

Products

The War Room Jobs Salary Guide Tech Sales U

Company

About Us How It Works Blog Bug Bounty

Contact

Press Careers

If you are hired as a contract sales rep by a Bravado customer, we may ask you to prove access to the employee email account provided to you by that customer. This data will be shared with customers to track your sales productivity; customers can use this data to confirm you meet the minimum activity requirements to pay out your ramp stipend and commission.

Paul Shouse

First Meeting Agendas

Do you Pitch or Q&A for first meetings?

20 comments

Related posts

In person meeting

First introduction meeting with prospect

Asking budget during first meeting