Feels Like the Old Days (F2F Meetings)
May. 21st, 2025 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerYesterday reminded me of the "old days" in software selling. These old days aren't that old, of course. I'm only talking about the mid-aughts (when I started in technical sales) through the early 10s! So, what was so 15-years-ago about yesterday? It was meeting prospects and colleagues face-to-face for sales work.
Yesterday wasn't really even a travel day, per se. It's not like the old days when I was traveling a lot to San Diego, Chicago, New York, etc.— or traveling overseas— for sales calls. This one was just a ~30 minute drive away in Newark, California.
I drove to Newark, made a quick pit stop to pick up a colleague who did fly in and stopped at a nearby restaurant for lunch, then drove on to the customer's office. We had a big meeting with in-person attendees, upward of 20 people in the room. The last time I presented at a customer meeting that well attended in-person was probably 2018.
I fretted about these problems but I fought against them. I purposefully turned around a desk and faced the group at their level instead of standing behind the lectern. I invited questions throughout my presentation. I engaged each person who asked a question with a discussion to explore their needs to make sure I was addressing them on point. And I never said things like, "Well, moving along now...."
My techniques to overcome the lecture-hall setup worked. The meeting was way more interactive than I expected. Sure, not every one of the 20 attendees asked questions, but at least 6 different people did, and some asked multiple questions. And more than half the group stayed after the meeting to chat with my colleague and me.
What did we do in the car? We talked. We debriefed on how the meeting went. We discussed what worked well and what we could improve. We discussed next steps with this prospective customer. We also discussed sales strategy more broadly in our company and with our latest products and positioning.
When we got to SJ my colleague suggested getting a drink together. I was happy to. Again, this was a many-times-a-week thing among sellers years ago; today, again, it seems to happen only a few times a year. We sidled up at the bar in his hotel and talked for another hour. There, we talked less about the company and more about life in general. I learned about his family, his house, his outlook on life; and he learned about mine.
After a couple of drinks each— two small glasses of beer, really; our aim was to relax together, not get soused— we noticed it was going on 7 and decided to get dinner together. Original Joe's was 1/2 block away, so I suggested we eat there. Dinner was more of the same. We ate slowly, talking the whole time. It was about 9:30 when I walked him back to his hotel (I was parked there anyway 😅) and drove home.
Yesterday wasn't really even a travel day, per se. It's not like the old days when I was traveling a lot to San Diego, Chicago, New York, etc.— or traveling overseas— for sales calls. This one was just a ~30 minute drive away in Newark, California.
I drove to Newark, made a quick pit stop to pick up a colleague who did fly in and stopped at a nearby restaurant for lunch, then drove on to the customer's office. We had a big meeting with in-person attendees, upward of 20 people in the room. The last time I presented at a customer meeting that well attended in-person was probably 2018.
The Meeting
Seeing how big the meeting room was— it was set up as a classroom— and how many people filed in, I fretted about how the meeting would flow. Rooms where the seats are all front-facing discourage genuine conversation. People see the physical layout and think, "Okay, I'm supposed to let the presenter speak."And when there's a large crowd in a meeting, anything over 10 let alone the 20 we had yesterday, the audience size also discourages a lot of people from speaking up. It's like people are thinking, "My question had better be worth interrupting 20 people or I should keep quiet." Moreover a lot of people are intimidated by such gatherings. They're reluctant to speak up for fear that asking a question may make them sound stupid or acknowledging that there's a problem they don't know how to solve will make their colleagues think less of them.I fretted about these problems but I fought against them. I purposefully turned around a desk and faced the group at their level instead of standing behind the lectern. I invited questions throughout my presentation. I engaged each person who asked a question with a discussion to explore their needs to make sure I was addressing them on point. And I never said things like, "Well, moving along now...."
My techniques to overcome the lecture-hall setup worked. The meeting was way more interactive than I expected. Sure, not every one of the 20 attendees asked questions, but at least 6 different people did, and some asked multiple questions. And more than half the group stayed after the meeting to chat with my colleague and me.
The After-Meeting
Oh, but the successful f2f meeting wasn't the only part that felt old school. After the meeting in Newark I drove my colleague to his hotel in downtown San Jose. Just driving with a colleague felt old school. It used to be a regular, almost daily thing in my life as a salesperson years ago. Now it happens maybe a few times a year.What did we do in the car? We talked. We debriefed on how the meeting went. We discussed what worked well and what we could improve. We discussed next steps with this prospective customer. We also discussed sales strategy more broadly in our company and with our latest products and positioning.
When we got to SJ my colleague suggested getting a drink together. I was happy to. Again, this was a many-times-a-week thing among sellers years ago; today, again, it seems to happen only a few times a year. We sidled up at the bar in his hotel and talked for another hour. There, we talked less about the company and more about life in general. I learned about his family, his house, his outlook on life; and he learned about mine.
After a couple of drinks each— two small glasses of beer, really; our aim was to relax together, not get soused— we noticed it was going on 7 and decided to get dinner together. Original Joe's was 1/2 block away, so I suggested we eat there. Dinner was more of the same. We ate slowly, talking the whole time. It was about 9:30 when I walked him back to his hotel (I was parked there anyway 😅) and drove home.
