Learn some simple rules of thumb from an experienced entrepreneur turned investor
Develop a roadmap with the customer and all stakeholders showing the pieces of the sales processes that have been started and which ones have been completed. Creating a framework that shows progress and what to expect creates transparency with your customer which leads to better customer outcomes.
Add all the stakeholders to a living document or collaborative meeting note platform and integrate it with your team's CRM (like Salesforce). Your customer should feel like they are a part of the process, whether that be the sales process or ongoing customer partnership.
Keep a history of the progress along the roadmap to closing a deal to drive the deal. Great living roadmaps of all sales processes are essential to closing deals on time - in every sales process the customer controls the gas and you control the brake.
Make sure that a customer meeting never ends with a customer having doubts, questions or uncertainty. Encourage your customer to share any concerns, roadblocks or questions.
Where to from here? When's the next meeting? What should happen between now and then?
There are many different types of customer meetings, so no one template is going to work for everyone. Still, take a look at the template above and you'll see that many of the best practices we listed above are built-in.
Whatever their goal is, make it central to the agenda. Then, keep your agenda concise when possible. When arranging the list, start with general topics and move to more specific ones.