Quiz: Do You Schedule This Meeting?

SCENARIO: You're trying to schedule a face-to-face meeting with a new prospect, who is an extremely busy person. You want to ensure you've got enough time to have a meaningful conversation. Your experience says that such a conversation will take at least 30 minutes. The prospect will only give you a 15 minute slot but says he'll probably be able to give you 30 minutes, if you call back next week.

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The best answer is Take the 15 minute meeting. Here's why.

If you call back, you'll be starting the conversation at square one and chances are the prospect's schedule will be just as jammed.

So take the 15 minutes, but schedule the entire 30 minutes on your calendar to accommodate an extension of the meeting.

When you are nearing the end of your allotted time, and IF the meeting is going smoothly, you remind the prospect that your time is nearly up.

Then, once you've shown that you respect the prospect's time, you politely ask if he would mind extending the meeting.

If you've been doing a good job at selling the fact that you can add value, the prospect will let meeting continue and make his next appointment to wait.