How to host the perfect customer meeting ?

The importance of keeping in touch with your customers cannot be overstated, regardless of whether you start a small or large business. Hosting regular meetings with your customers is one way to keep them interested in doing business with you.

Organizing customer meetings (whether physical or virtual) is an excellent way to improve customer service. This will allow for a variety of purposes, such as product training, discussing services, and conducting quarterly business reviews. However, the process of hosting a customer meeting can be daunting, but it can be a rewarding and productive experience if you plan and execute it properly. In this article, we will show you how to host a perfect customer meeting.

Customer Meetings

Customers should be the focus of a customer meeting, not the business itself. Meetings are about your clients, who are the heroes in your story. An example of the narrative would be when a new product or service is to be released by the organization. If the product/service announcement is like, “We’d like to show you this new feature we added,” then the update makes the company the hero in the story. However, if the announcement is like, “We’ve built a new feature that eases your workflow. I’d like to demonstrate it to you and get your review. Is that a good idea?” then the customers will be the hero. 

One of the benefits of doing such is the impact it’ll have on the customer; they’ll feel important. Finally, you’re showing that the client’s time is valuable by asking permission to make the presentation.

Since you now know how to frame your topic to your customers, learning about creating an agenda is next. Please note that it comes first before hosting a meeting.

Customer Meeting Agenda

Before you begin any good meeting, you must create a schedule. Generally, your schedule is your plan and your roadmap. Your customer meeting agenda won’t correctly kick-start if you don’t ask yourself questions like “Why did the prospective clients agree to the meeting initially?”

It’s normal for a sales manager to have objectives before setting up a meeting with the clients. These objectives range from wanting to help customers succeed, nourishing their relationship, and identifying possible risks to announcing growth opportunities. However, the most vital thing is understanding what customers expect to achieve by sharing valuable time with you. 

Customer Meeting Best Practices

When running your customer meeting, you must keep the following best practices in mind.

Practice #1: You should prevent avoidable delays during your sales meeting. Check out the conference call platform you want to use and plug your laptop into the projector. 

Practice #2: You can pace the conversation during your customer meeting by interacting with them constantly. With this, you’ll be able to ask questions and keep them active.

Practice #3: If you’re driving the customer meeting, you should engage every participant by making eye contact with them and setting the tone of the discussion. 

Practice #4: Listening to the customer’s experience should supersede the meeting agenda. They might have something more important than what you want to say. It helps to build customer rapport.

Practice #5: Ending a meeting with the min reading, who’s responsible for each task, the set timelines is highly recommended. 

Practice #6: Before parting with the customer, be happy about your progress and smile for your bright future with the customer. It’ll make them anxious to see you again.

Customer Meeting Follow-Up Actions

Part of the pro tips you should follow after a meeting is to share your notes with your customer through email immediately. The notes should include the schedule, the decisions, and the next steps. The aim is to update them more about the background information.

On the same day as the meeting, you can also link or attach any documents you discussed during the face-to-face meeting. The next step is highlighting the personnel responsible for a task and giving a realistic deadline. Finally, you can use these notes to build excitement for your next client meeting by reiterating all action items from the last meeting.To learn about customer meeting follow-up, read our article on how to follow up after a customer meeting. 

Customer Meeting Agenda Template

Congratulations! You have learned about the art of customer meetings. You can use a template to plan, host, and follow up with your next prospective client. There is no one-size customer meeting agenda template, but you can use the framework below.

Template: Customer Meeting Agenda

Welcome

Welcome the prospective clients and appreciate them for granting their time.

Project Status

• Progress report
• Summarize 1-5 progress reports here in the schedule with 1-3 bullet points each
• Timeline
• Put the agenda high-level deadlines/milestones 

Training or Product Updates

Input any notes about training or product updates in this section.

Action Items

It should entail the name of the personnel responsible, the task, and the due date.

Summarize & Commit

Conclude the meeting by recapping the above action items with the min read—circle back to the original meeting objective to demonstrate how collective you have achieved the goal. 

Internal Notes

It would be best to put the internal notes at the bottom of your agenda. Please note that you will share it solely with your sales team.

Positive Highlights

Evaluate beneficial and productive moments of learning in your client meeting

Risks & Opportunities

• Concerns and risks
• Upsell opportunities

Why the Customer Meeting Is Key to Winning the Deal?

A sales process involves organizing a meeting with a prospective buyer. You will use this milestone activity to assess your customer’s requirements. If it aligns with yours, you’ll have the edge over your competitors. Hence, you must prepare adequately by planning and strategizing before the meeting. 

Before The Meeting Preparation

Before a face-to-face meeting with prospective clients, it’s essential to know the 5W1H rule. The 5W entails who, why, what, when, and where. In the same vein, the 1H is the how. It’s crucial to find answers to all the questions mentioned above. 

The rule will set you up for a successful and productive meeting to move your deal forward and achieve customer success.

Conclusion

It is important for every business to prepare well for a customer meeting, either it’s going to be physical or virtual one. You’ll be able to host an event that is both productive and enjoyable for the entire group by keeping the best practices in this article in mind. Choose a time and place (or a virtual platform) where everyone will be able to participate effectively and have fun!

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