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Host Stacy Havener brings you the storytelling tips, sales strategies, behavioral secrets, and inspirational stories that help YOU turn your words into dollars. Learn from sales and marketing experts. Meet finance and investment leaders, founders and fund managers who have made it, and the ones on the rise. Because there are people behind the portfolios. Their stories matter. So does yours.
Presented by:
Ultimus Fund Solutions // www.ultimusfundsolutions.com
GemCap // www.geminicapital.ie
@stacyhavener // www.billiondollarbackstory.com
[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: Craving more knowledge, but don't always have time to sit down for a five course meal. Take a quick snack break with story snacks, bite-size content to feed your funnel. Each short episode features, Stacy, digging into one question. This series has her talking stories, sales, and so much more.
[00:00:19] Oh yeah, it's time for story snacks.
[00:00:27] What's the best way to recover when a meeting goes off track? The room isn't responding the way we expected or want them to, or they're zooming out or we're losing them. Someone's going off on a tangent or something like that. It's a great question. Happens to all of us. Okay. The first thing I wanna do is we're gonna do some preventive work so that we reduce the amount of times this happens.
[00:00:53] So that's the first part of this. The second part is we're gonna talk about the reactive remedy, [00:01:00] which is, it's happening and now what do we do about it? But first I wanna say, let's actually reduce the amount of times this happens to us. And this goes back to something I say often, which is the success of the meeting is directly correlated to the preparation we do before the meeting ever starts.
[00:01:18] Actually, it's not even correl. There's causation here. Okay, a great meeting. There is causation from the preparation that we do before that meeting ever starts, and one of the most important parts of that preparation is the conversation you have with the champion from the prospect's firm, whoever your person is.
[00:01:41] It's the conversation you have with them in preparation for the meeting. And that conversation looks something like this. Hey, Mary, so psyched to see you. Next week, whatever the case may be, tell me who's gonna be in the room. What do I need to know? Like who's who in the zoo? No one can see me do this [00:02:00] 'cause this is a podcast.
[00:02:01] This is People Talk. This is Mary talking. Okay. It's like little talking hands. Okay, so Mary now is telling me who's gonna be there and I'm taking notes and I'm understanding that, and I might have questions like, you know, in the conversations you've been having, like what are people talking about? Like what's an important topic that the investment committee is thinking about, either depending on how far we are in due diligence related to us, or related to the asset class, or you know, sort of what's the buzz.
[00:02:31] I want that, and then I'm gonna get more granular like, so how do you want this meeting to go? What are the questions that you really wanna be sure we hit? Are there certain like hot buttons that we need to address or, or elephants in the room that we just don't wanna have stomping around in there making a mess of things?
[00:02:51] And I'm gonna take all these notes down and I'm going to actually create, this is our framework on, you know, more better meetings. [00:03:00] Part of the better meeting is that you have a. Meeting prep document that then aligns everybody on your side, right? You've met with the prospect, you've understand who's gonna be there, what's important to them, what topics they wanna cover, what questions they wanna be sure are answered.
[00:03:16] Now you're gonna go and make sure that everybody on the fund how side understands that as well, and that we prepare. And now when we go into the meeting, I have that document with me printed and I'm not hiding it. Hear that rattling. That's the paper. Okay. I'm like, I've got it. And I'm pointing and I'm checking things off as the meeting goes.
[00:03:39] So Mary and her team know I've got all your stuff right here and I'm gonna make sure we talk about all of it. Okay. So there's a couple things embedded in that little scenario. The first one, our preventative work is on the preparation we're gonna do before we get to the meeting, and that's that conversation we have with our champion in this case, [00:04:00] Mary.
[00:04:00] The second part of that preparation is the work we do on our side with whoever's coming to the meeting. From our side, how prepared are we? Do we understand what's gonna happen when we go in? Now, the third part of the preventive, there's a lot of preventive steps here. The third part of the meeting is now what happens when the meeting begins, because our job as the salesperson is to be the Jimmy Fallon of the meeting.
[00:04:28] Okay. We are the moderator. We are the interviewer. We are the one that is sort of making sure everybody's questions are answered and just making sure the meeting is flowing. We're shaking the scaries out, we're doing all the things. If we give up that seat as Jimmy Fallon, if we don't take up that space and we just walk into the meeting, we go, Mary, meet Jim.
[00:04:54] And then you sit back and just twill your thumbs or whatever the hell, you're not involved. Then if the meeting does [00:05:00] what you're asking, it goes off the rails. Now it's awkward sauce for you to insert yourself into a meeting, which you've had no voice, and now you're gonna try to jump in and be like, meetings going off the rails.
[00:05:12] Mm-hmm. Ain't nobody like that. So it's important for the salesperson to come in and control the meeting for many reasons. And if you're doing that, so all of these preventive measures should hopefully, 80% of the time, keep the meeting on track and make it enjoyable and make sure questions are getting answered and everyone's having as, as good a time as they can have in the meeting, right?
[00:05:38] If you've done all of that and the meeting still goes off the rails. Then because you are the Jimmy Fallon, you have the ability to sort of control and determine how are you gonna get it back on track. Now there's nuances to this of course. I guess in the case of a [00:06:00] tangent, tangents happen a lot.
[00:06:02] Meetings and tangents happen a lot with fund managers because they wanna talk about their names and their portfolio, and they are really passionate about that. So they're gonna try to get there as soon as possible. And when they get there, they're not gonna wanna leave.
[00:06:22] So if the tangent, which typically is gonna be the fund manager, if the tangent is the prospect. Who's deep diving on some topic and they're just like going, and it's positive. It's additive. You let it go. It's their meeting. If it starts. Turning, you know that like vibe, you're like, this is actually now getting not positive.
[00:06:47] Like we're we're rabbit hole and we're not communicating well, then you wanna step in and say, you know what? This is great. I know we have other you, you gave me other questions you wanted to get through. Why don't we take some to-dos [00:07:00] here. It sounds like we need maybe some more data or some more information to help you understand this question better.
[00:07:05] Would it be okay if we took that as a follow up? If they say no, you're asking right? If they say no, I'd like to, you know, one more question on that. That's fine. Remember, it's their meeting. If it's their tangent, it's their meeting Flip side. If it's the fund manager who's gone on a tangent, you can stop that because you're Jimmy Fallon and you can, the way that I like to do this, if a fund manager's just like geeking out on something is at the appropriate moment, you step in, you say, oh my gosh.
[00:07:35] Jim, we love your passion. I know you are so passionate about this. You could talk about this forever, but I wanna get back and I wanna get back to what Mary originally asked, which was this, and then Jim can, like, everybody can chuckle and it's very like about how passionate Jim is about this portfolio and his positions, and no one feels bad.
[00:07:58] So that's probably the most [00:08:00] common thing that's gonna happen in a meeting where you feel like it's going off the rails. Please do not do the like kick somebody under the table. That's so whack. It really is. No one wants to be kicked under the table. We're not in grade school. Okay. Which is why you need to have a voice.
[00:08:14] If you are feeling like you need to kick someone under the table, it's because you don't have a role in the meeting. That's your issue. You did that, right? No kicking under the table. And also know after the meeting saying like, you know, you really went off the rails here and I wish you didn't do that.
[00:08:32] Because if I'm Jim, I'm like, well, why didn't you stop me? What good does it do me now the meeting's done. Okay. So that's probably the most typical. I'll do one more 'cause I could talk about this for a long time, obviously. Um. If people are just staring at you like there's three people from the prospect and no one's, it's just like stone.
[00:08:55] They're just looking at you Again. I'm gonna go back to like the preventive thing [00:09:00] would've been, this never should have happened because you should have friends, at least one friend there before you went in if you did the preparation work. But let's say you just found yourself in this meeting and the vibe is super bad.
[00:09:14] Not bad, but just super awkward and strange. That's typically gonna happen at the beginning of the meeting. And again, this is where your Jimmy Fallon skills come in. We have to warm it up, Chris. And if you don't know crisscross, I'm really sorry that that reference will not hit for you, but you have to warm it up.
[00:09:31] The meeting is awkward. It's awkward in the first like couple minutes. And so if you meet the prospects and the fund managers in Awkward Town. You're not helping, like part of my job as a salesperson and just in the work that we do with fund managers, I give them my energy. I come to the meeting, I have to fill up my energy because I know I'm gonna have to give everyone a piece of my [00:10:00] heart in this meeting so that the meeting is not an awkward circus.
[00:10:05] And so really it's on you to find some icebreaker way. To, and I've talked about this before on the pod, but I'll, I'll reiterate in case you have haven't heard this one, but like if something's hanging on the wall in a conference room, it probably means something to someone. If there's like a trophy or some sort of tombstone thing of those crystal things that you get when you do something jazzy professionally, that probably means something to someone.
[00:10:32] So one of the ways that you can sort of shake out the scaries is to just actually bring the physical space into the conversation. Wow. This view is amazing. Oh my gosh. What is that cool art on the wall? This is really, wow, this is different. Unexpected. Or if it's like a picture of a person who is this person?
[00:10:53] So again, most of the awkwardness, it's not because they don't like you, it's not because they don't care. It's because [00:11:00] we are all people. And meetings are awkward when you don't know each other. Real life, real talk. So I hope that helps. That's a lot. It's all about the preparation. Try to prevent. This awkwardness from happening.
[00:11:13] If you get into it, it is your job to get everybody out, and hopefully these are helpful tips on how to do that. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products or to adopt any investment strategy.
[00:11:37] Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Haven or Haven, or Capital Partners