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The Customer-First Toolkit: How I meet 500+ customers a year as a CEO
The Customer-First Toolkit: How I meet 500+ customers a year as a CEO
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Travel

Sales and Customer Success: Who should I meet on the road? Help me queue up in-person client meetings.

My approach to meeting clients when traveling

I’m a nut about efficiency. Nothing makes me happier than using every minute I have productively. I thought I was just a weirdo, but turns out, there are
thousands of us
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!
But given this schedule kick, I enjoy making sure that the business trips, as painful as the redeye flights are, are full of business meetings.
When I go to a city (say New York), my Chief of Staff uses Gainsight to pull a list of clients in the city and filters (1) ones that are healthy (where we could possibly get them to be an advocate or expand) and (2) ones that need help.
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Screen Shot 2021-08-18 at 12.00.03 PM.jpg
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We will review the list with our Client Outcomes (Customer Success) team to make sure they agree with the targeted contacts. And our Sales team pulls a list of prospective clients to meet.
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Screen Shot 2021-08-18 at 12.01.15 PM.png
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My assistant drafts emails (which I personalize) from me to each potential meeting.
Screen Shot 2021-08-18 at 12.01.50 PM.jpg
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Of note, my personal record was 10 in-person client meetings in one day in Manhattan. I’m particularly proud of that, given the number of Ubers, lobby sign-ins, and slow elevators I had to deal with!

How to queue up an in-person meeting in a different city

I’ve found that direct outreach from the CEO is more effective than trying to have the meetings organized by my team. Still, much of the work detailed above can be simplified in a single table.
Sales and Customer Success: Tell me who I should meet when I’m traveling. Add clients to this table, pick which of my templates you’d like to use (it defaults to
@Visiting a city
⁠
which is my standard for traveling), and click create draft. I’ll take care of the rest from my inbox.
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Apply all templates
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Create all drafts
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Clear list
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Recipient First Name
Recipient Email
Sender first name
City
Event date
Email template
Apply template
Email body
Email subject
Preview
Create draft
Reset
1
Carys
carys.metz5@cancity.com
Nick
New York City
Thu, Aug 26
Visiting a city
​
​
​
​
​
​
2
Jayden
jayden.massey6@openlane.com
Nick
Des Moines
Thu, Sep 23
Visiting a city
​
​
​
​
​
​
No results from filter
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Next up:
Advisory Board
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