The hardest part in the sales process is not closing the deal.

It's preparing for the sales meeting with your prospects.

How?

Let me explain.

Closing requires lot of time and effort. Depending on your sales cycle it could take months if not weeks. The impact you can have on your client on the first meeting can shorten your deal cycle.

Most sales professionals miss the opportunity to make an impact in their sales meetings.

Instead, they are too focused on the close.

I don't blame you if you have a deal closing mindset. Preparing for sales meeting is not an easy process. You need to perform a thorough prospect research, clearly identify objectives, and align your story to the customer needs.

Guess what?

Generative AI like ChatGPT or Apollo can shorten the research time significantly. Instead of choosing one tool over other I like to combine to get exponential benefits.

Step 1: ChatGPT for Deep Dive Research:

Your meeting preparation will fall apart if you don't do prospect research at deeper level.

I understand you may not have enough time to do deep research due to meetings and other non-sales tasks. Infact, most sales professionals spend 50% or more on low value activities. You are not alone.

ChatGPT can help close the gap.

I wrote a detailed post on how to use ChatGPT to perform customer research. I talk about how to use a 7 levels of pain points and 11 desires framework. Within minutes, ChatGPT can provide you talking points related to your target audience and their needs vs wants.

Step 2: Use Apollo to identify buying signals:

Apollo has become my favorite outbound tool.

Why?

It offers a comprehensive follow-up automation, and their Salesforce integration is strong. It has a feature called Buying Intent Signals.

Buying signals are available across the following categories:

Awards or recognitions
High buying intent (someone actively looking for solutions)
New client signed
New partnership
Office expansion
Cutting cost (great for automation tools)
M&As
Recent funding
Rapid growth

You can also create your own buyer intent signal based on the interaction such as email or call interactions. A high buying signal (4 intent triggers from the above list) is a powerful indicator of strong desire to purchase a solution.

Step 3: Leave a lasting impact using AI follow-up sequences:

Preparing for a sales meeting is half of the equation, strong follow-up is the second half.

Building sequence tailored to your prospect meeting is time consuming. You have to:

Select the right marketing material
Manually write sequence emails based on your discussion
Personalize your emails

Apollo's AI changes this. It can use the sentiment of each email response to product a new email on autopilot.

You can also create unique sales plays based on your company needs. These plays can be utilized by your peers OR for your future customer follow-up...if you are in a compete mode ;)

Don't go solo when preparing for your next sales meeting. Use Gen AI tools to save 3+ hours of the manual process.

What other steps comes to your mind when implementing Gen AI into your meeting prep process?

3 Steps to using Gen AI to Prepare for A Successful Sales Meeting

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