Should You Still Visit Your Prospects In Person? Almost Certainly

I remember the first customer I lost due to not showing up in person.  They were a Fortune 50 customer.

We did a CSAT survey, and every user loved us.  The implementation was flawless.  There were zero issues.  And … we lost them at renewal.

Our buyer was kind enough to call us and explain why.  “Well, your competitor was in the office last week, and just convinced us that …”

Ugh.  We’d done everything “right” … except … We’d never even visited.  But their sales team had.

I hear this story now time and time again.  Here are a few from a LinkedIn post I did on the matter:

You can see from both my subsequent experience, and all the comments on the post in this thread, that I was hardly alone.

You already know this.  If you show up, you close faster and you close more.  And you also learn more.

You can talk about problems, solutions and needs if you show up in person.   And you kick off a potential decade+ long relationship.

The flip side though these days, the world has changed.  And it’s become standardized to close most deals on Zoom.  Even in the enterprise, we all learned how to close multi-million dollar deals without an in-person visit.

And today, prospects are much savvier.  They’ve already deployed 200+ SaaS apps.  They’ve already done your free trial.  They’ve already decided you are probably the vendor they want.  So in terms of time effort for a sales rep, it’s harder and harder to justify getting out there and meeting a prospect in person.

So what’s the right trade-off in the WFH, hybrid, and distributed era?  There is no question traveling takes time, and time away from deals.

Here are some guidelines:

• Show up in person to any $50k+ competitive deal.  If the deal is competitive, and you show up, your odds of winning go way, way up.
• Show up in person to any $100k+ deal if you can, even if you think you’ve “won” it or are the clear default choice.  These deals are worth the time and effort to travel, almost always, unless you are very remote.
• Show up in person to every local $50k+ deal.  There is no excuse if you are in the Bay Area, and your prospect is as well, to not go meet in person.
• Show up in person to every Top 100 logo deal. Figure out the Top 100 logos you want to get.  And force the team to go in person.  Even if it’s a $5k deal today, of course, a top logo deal can be six figures over time.
• Show up in person if the competition does, period, if you want to win it.  Thing is, it’s hard to know until it’s too late.
• Customers outside of tech often expect an in-person visit for bigger deals, period.  If you are struggling to close non-tech customers over Zoom, there’s a reason why.  It’s not SOP there.  Go visit.  Go make a customer call in person.

Remember, in SaaS, your top customers can last a decade or more.  So as CEO, sort of 10x those numbers above in your head.  Maybe it’s only a $20k deal today.  But if they stay 10 years, and the account grows 3x, that’s … a $600k deal.  Is a $600k CLV deal worth Ubering over during the sales process?  Of course it is …

And finally, if you don’t show up for a bigger deal during the sales process, at least visit in person soon after that.

That won’t help you close the deal — not at all.  But it’s easier to implement.  Just draw a bright line for CS, and make sure you call on them right after the deal closes.  That still builds a relationship.  Just not in a way that increases your close rates or initial deal size.

 

(note: an updated SaaStr Classic post)