Are in-person meetings still necessary to win large sales deals?

Patrick Forquer · May 11, 2026

Enterprise sales teams should be physically in the prospect's office by the second or third meeting; if they're not, something is wrong

People don't pay attention on Zoom, and for law firms this is a bet-the-company, existential decision where they are betting on the team as much as the product

Scope: exceptions for hybrid/remote corporate buyers; applies to deals of any real size

22:14 20VC: Inside Legora: $100M ARR in 18 Months | Jude Law Generated $50M in Sales Pipeline: The Economics Broken Down | Competing Against Harvey, the 800 Pound Gorilla | Why Legora is Undervalued at $5.5BN with Patrick Forquer, CRO @ Legora

Fred Turner · Jul 18, 2026 · hedged

Heavy interpersonal selling will persist in five to ten years for important deals, because human attention becomes the scarce resource that signals trust.

Face-to-face contact becomes the foundation of trust and, as the scarce resource, gets allocated to the deals that matter most.

Scope: only in some aspects of the sale

56:50 20VC: $5BN in Revenue, 7 to 7,000 Employees in 9 Months, 206,000 Tests in a Single Day: The Craziest Story in Startups: Curative with Fred Turner

Harry Stebbings · Jul 18, 2026

The bigger the contract, the more important it is to have in-person trust and relationship.

57:03 20VC: $5BN in Revenue, 7 to 7,000 Employees in 9 Months, 206,000 Tests in a Single Day: The Craziest Story in Startups: Curative with Fred Turner

Mark Goldberger · Apr 19, 2023

In-person sales meetings are a dying art — not dead, but on life support, and haven't been required in recent years even for large deals

Video conferencing, digital whiteboarding and sales intelligence tools were built for a remote-first world, though this can make human interaction transactional instead of deep

Scope: says he personally misses it and takes every chance to meet clients in person

44:43 20Sales: Why You Should Never Hire a VP Sales First, How To Create Urgency in a Sales Process, How to Do Traditional Outbound 10x Better, Why Revenue Doesn't Matter with Your First Customers | Mark Goldberger, Head of Enterprise Sales @ Ramp

Lori Jimenez · Aug 2, 2023 · hedged

In-person onsites as a sales requirement are dying out, though not gone

We learned during the shift to virtual how much can be accomplished remotely, so the old everything-must-be-in-person norm has changed

Scope: dying rather than dead; onsites still occur

47:12 20Sales: Why The Founder Has To Be The One To Create The Sales Playbook, When To Hire Your First Rep, Why Junior is Better Than Senior, How to Manage Sales Rep Compensation, How To Onboard New Sales Reps and more with Lori Jimenez, CRO @ WorkRamp

Kyle Norton · May 30, 2025

In-person selling doesn't make economic sense for Owner

They run the sales cycle so efficiently digitally that field selling can't compete on economics

42:58 20Sales: From $2M ARR to $40M ARR: The Playbook | How to Use AI To Supercharge Your Sales Team | Why Pipeline Reviews are BS | The Sales Call Script that Closes 99% of Prospects and How to Hire the Best Sales Reps with Kyle Norton, CRO @ Owner

Ishan Mukherjee · Apr 4, 2025

Getting on planes and meeting people in person is the sales tactic that hasn't changed in the last five years

60:49 In person travel is the one unchanged tactic

Maggie Hott · Dec 14, 2022

Always being on-site to meet customers is a dead sales tactic — one or two on-sites over the course of a big deal is enough

Buyers value their time above all else, so resolving their pains efficiently matters more to them than the lunch you buy them; and the seller gets their life back rather than flying multiple times a week

56:41 One or two onsites per deal suffices frequent visits unnecessary

Lori Jimenez · Aug 2, 2023 · hedged

Old-school in-person enterprise entertaining (steak dinners, sports events) isn't dead, but it has been relegated to a specific, additive motion rather than the core play.

COVID proved how much selling can be done remotely, so the entertainment moment now has to be earned by the work around it and justified by ROI for customer and company.

33:25 In person is additive and must be earned

Harry Stebbings · Aug 2, 2023

Whether entertainment-style selling works depends on knowing the individual buyer.

34:05 Depends on the individual buyer

Sam Blond · Apr 12, 2024

Sales will return to meeting customers in person, and meeting prospects in person today is a real competitive advantage

Brex measured 3x higher likelihood of closing a deal when they met the customer in person versus not; the industry hasn't yet returned to pre-2020 in-person norms

65:58 In person is a measurable win rate advantage

Adam Foroughi · Apr 27, 2026 · hedged

In-person contact cannot be replaced and becomes more valuable as more work is done by bots.

As a sales business talking to advertisers, relationships are built in person, and human contact gains value in a world of automation.

38:26 Automation raises the value of human contact

Ron Gabrisko · Aug 4, 2025

Sellers should take every opportunity to meet customers in person rather than working the deal remotely — 'sell from your feet, not from your seat'

Enterprise buyers are making decisions that can make or break their careers, so they need rapport and trust that you can only build with in-person time

63:21 Sell from your feet not your seat in person effort wins enterprise trust

Kyle Norton · May 30, 2025

A remote demo model beats door-knocking on efficiency, making Owner's reps three to four times more productive per rep than competitors running feet-on-the-street

A rep taking three to four demos a day and closing one or two plus chasing follow-ups is hard to beat, while door-knocking wastes time on irrelevant doors, unscored prospects and absent owners

44:57 Remote demo model outproduces door knocking field sales on productivity