3 Ways to Land In-Person Meetings

As much as Chris and I love talking about AI sales tools and digital outreach, the most powerful GTM hack is the most obvious: go meet face-to-face.  I’m guilty of crutching on the convenience of Zoom calls - I mean, I even met my wife on a dating app.  

This week alone, though, I had 4 in-person meetings - one onsite, one lunch, two coffees.  Next week I’m in person on Monday and trying to schedule another on Friday.  

While Clay is all the hype (see tender offer news), old-school interactions unlock value no tool can - texting relationships, understanding of personal motivations, and real watercooler talk that doesn’t happen on Zoom (e.g., “you can win this person over by doing X, but definitely don’t say Y”).  

The onsite was particularly revealing - walking across their campus and eating in the cafeteria taught me more about their culture than any Perplexity search could.  These experiences also become easy ice-breakers for multi-threading into a new business units.

So how do you get in person in 2025?  Three strategies that have worked for me:

Strategy 1: Intel Gathering @ Conferences

In my first week at Windsurf, I used CommonRoom to land a meeting with a director-level prospect.  He had mentioned Windsurf on LinkedIn and his profile showed he was attending NVIDIA GTC the following week, so I outbounded him with the offer to meet for coffee at the conference.  He wasn’t my buyer, but that 1:1 yielded intel I used to then successfully outbound SVP/VP executives and initiate a 7-figure deal cycle.   

Strategy 2: No Champion? Build Long-Term Coaching Relationships

My first outbound meeting at Metronome was with the CEO of a popular open-source InfraSaaS company.  We got kicked down to a PM and the deal stalled.  

Two months later, I reactivated the deal by telling the PM I’d be in his city for client meetings and asked him to lunch.  He agreed.  Once in person, he opened up about org dynamics and became a texting-basis coach (he even offered for me to stay at his place in Hawaii).  

His team didn’t buy Metronome, but when I joined Windsurf, he was at a new company that was in my book of business.  With one text, I learned exactly who to target and the status of ongoing competitive evaluations.  I’m now in an active deal cycle with his new company.  

Strategy 3: Champion Building - What’s their Hobby?

As Chris called out in his article, “We don’t play golf, we play software,” I don’t believe you win deals with technical buyers by doing “salesy” things like golfing.  But, after you’ve proven value by helping build a strong business case or navigate a complex enterprise, you earn the right to take the relationship deeper.  

At Branch, I worked with a popular QSR and learned that my rising champion loved biking.  First, we did a 1:1 virtual Peloton competition.  A few months later, I was in his city and proposed to go for a 25-mile bike ride together.  During that ride, he coached me on how to handle detractors and what needed to happen to close the deal.  That deal closed a few weeks later and helped me get to President’s Club.  

I’m taking this same approach with my largest deal at Windsurf.

Conclusion

I’ll keep this short - get out of your apartment or office and meet your prospects in person!

Cheers,

Julian