A qualified business matching meeting is one in which the organisation, the individual and the agenda have all been verified before the meeting takes place. Remove any of the three, and the meeting is an introduction rather than a commercial discussion.
At SJ Digital Media Solutions, a meeting must satisfy defined standards before it is counted toward the minimum of eight qualified meetings in an engagement:
Qualified organisation: the company fits predefined criteria of industry relevance, company size, distribution capability and financial standing, drawn from the pool of approximately 25 carefully selected target organisations
Qualified individual: the counterpart is a senior executive with authority to progress a partnership, such as a Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Business Owner, Country Director, Commercial Director or other C-suite decision-maker
Qualified interest: the organisation has reviewed the client's proposition and confirmed genuine commercial interest in exploring a partnership
Qualified agenda: both sides enter the meeting understanding what is being discussed, whether a distributorship, franchise, licensing arrangement, agency, reseller appointment or joint venture
This standard explains why qualified meetings convert while volume-based introductions do not. A discussion with a decision-maker who has already assessed the opportunity moves immediately to substance: market fit, pricing structures, volumes, territories and next steps. A discussion with an unqualified contact, however friendly, must still be repeated internally at the right level before anything can happen.
When evaluating any business matching provider, SMEs should ask precisely how the provider defines a qualified meeting, and insist that the definition covers all four elements above. The number of meetings promised means little without the standard behind it.
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