Face-to-Face Customer Meetings That Scale in 2026

Jason Lemkin shared a blunt truth that a lot of early-stage teams still resist: meeting customers in person increases conversions and expansion. He points to a real-world benchmark—CROs at companies like Toast, Splunk, Brex, and Slice reporting 3x higher conversions from in-person sales motions—and adds a SaaStr internal analysis: 42% more revenue from sponsors they met IRL.

I agree with the spirit of it. But most small teams (and most small businesses running their own social media) hit the same wall fast: you can’t physically meet everyone. In 2026, the practical strategy isn’t “IRL or bust.” It’s IRL where it counts, plus AI-driven customer insight everywhere else—so you keep the human touch and build a feedback loop that doesn’t collapse when you get busy.

This post is part of our Small Business Social Media USA series, so we’ll connect the dots to what many founders and owners are actually doing day-to-day: using LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook Groups, TikTok, and DMs as their de facto customer success and research engine.

The reality: IRL still wins—because it creates commitment

Face-to-face meetings work because they force clarity and commitment on both sides. When you’re across the table (or even walking a site), you see the real constraints: who’s blocking adoption, what workflows are messy, which “simple request” is actually a process change.

That’s why Lemkin’s guidance lands:

• The more customers you meet in person, the more buy—and the more they expand.
• The more your product is a “solution” (complex workflow + change management) vs. a “tool,” the more you should meet.
• If you do nothing else, spend ~20% of your time with existing customers (not just prospects).

Here’s the thing: social media created a false comfort for a lot of B2B and service businesses. Likes, comments, and “Sounds great!” DMs feel like traction. But they often hide the hard stuff—implementation friction, stakeholder conflict, and the gap between what customers say and what they do.

IRL pulls the hard stuff forward.

What changed after Zoom (and what didn’t)

What changed: you typically do IRL later in the funnel now. First calls happen on Zoom, and travel happens when a deal is real—or when retention is on the line.

What didn’t change: for top accounts, strategic prospects, and high-risk renewals, being physically present increases trust faster than any deck.

For small businesses across the U.S., this shows up in simple ways:

• The agency owner who visits a client site before a retainer renewal.
• The MSP who runs an onsite “network health day” after onboarding.
• The local home services company that meets property managers quarterly.

Those visits aren’t “nice to have.” They’re a revenue strategy.

A simple rule set: who to meet, and when (so you don’t burn out)

You should meet as many customers as you can in person—within constraints. The trick is picking the right subset so the time investment pays back.

Use this prioritization model.

1) Meet every local customer early (yes, even small ones)

Lemkin’s rough rule is solid: try to meet your first ~100 local customers in person, especially in the early days.

Why it works:

• You’ll hear the same objections repeatedly (that’s positioning).
• You’ll notice the same setup failures repeatedly (that’s onboarding).
• You’ll see what customers are actually using (that’s product direction).

For Small Business Social Media USA readers: if your acquisition is happening through social media marketing for small business (especially local Facebook Groups, Instagram, or Nextdoor-style communities), early customers are often geographically close. That’s an advantage—use it.

2) Always meet the top 10 (or top 10%)—because expansion is easier than acquisition

Your top accounts subsidize your growth. They also represent the cleanest path to:

• upsells
• referrals
• case studies
• long-term retention

A practical approach:

• If you have under 100 customers, meet your top 10.
• If you have over 100 customers, meet your top 10% (or at least top 20 accounts).

Make it a cadence: quarterly or twice per year, depending on contract value and churn risk.

3) Meet “solution” customers more than “tool” customers

If your offering changes behavior—implementation, training, workflows—IRL visits shorten the time-to-value.

A quick test:

• If customers can succeed with a login and a quick tutorial: fewer IRL visits.
• If customers need stakeholder buy-in, new processes, or messy data: more IRL visits.

4) Protect 20% of your time for existing customers

This is the most underused lever.

If you’re spending 100% of your time on new logos, you’re quietly accepting churn. And churn is the most expensive form of “lead generation” because you have to replace revenue you already won.

In practice, “20% of your time” can be:

• 1 day per week reserved for customer calls/visits
• 2 afternoons per week for account reviews
• a standing “customer office hours” block promoted via LinkedIn and email

Where AI fits: scaling the feedback loop without losing the human touch

AI doesn’t replace face-to-face. It makes face-to-face more selective and more effective.

The hidden cost of manual feedback isn’t just time. It’s that you can’t process it consistently. Notes live in random docs. Patterns get missed. The loudest customer wins.

A modern stack (even for small teams) uses AI to handle three jobs: capture, summarize, and prioritize.

Capture: turn every customer interaction into usable data

If your customers talk to you across channels—Zoom, email, LinkedIn DMs, Instagram comments, support chat—AI can help centralize and structure it.

What to implement:

• Call recording + transcription for sales and success calls
• Auto-tagging for themes (pricing, onboarding, feature requests, competitor mentions)
• DM and comment logging for social channels used in small business social media strategy

This matters because social media engagement is often unstructured feedback. AI helps you treat it like product and revenue input, not just “marketing.”

Summarize: replace messy notes with a repeatable customer brief

After any key conversation (IRL or virtual), you want a consistent 1-page summary:

• customer goal
• what’s blocking adoption
• what success looks like in 30/60/90 days
• expansion triggers
• risk signals

AI is great at drafting this—your job is to edit it and act on it.

Prioritize: stop building for the loudest voice

This is where teams waste quarters.

Use AI-assisted analysis to:

• cluster requests by segment (industry, company size, use case)
• quantify frequency (how many accounts mention it)
• connect it to revenue (ARR at risk, expansion potential)

A feature request from a $300/month customer isn’t equal to a workflow blocker for your top 5 accounts. AI helps you keep that straight.

Snippet-worthy rule: Use IRL meetings to learn the “why,” and AI to track the “how often” and “how much revenue it affects.”

Social media is your always-on “listening tour” (if you run it like one)

Small business owners often do the most customer research on social media without realizing it. The problem is they don’t systematize it.

Here’s a better way to approach this for a U.S.-based small business social media plan.

Use platform signals to decide who deserves an IRL visit

If you sell B2B services or SaaS, your most valuable accounts often show up in public signals:

• LinkedIn posts about a problem you solve
• leadership changes (new VP/Director = new budget + new vendors)
• hiring sprees (tools and processes break during growth)
• complaints about competitors

Create a lightweight scoring model:

1. Account value (current ARR or estimated contract)
2. Expansion likelihood (new initiatives, growth, new team)
3. Risk (low usage, unhappy comments, slow response)
4. Proximity (can you drive/Uber there)

Then reserve IRL travel for the top scores.

Turn comments and DMs into a monthly “insights report”

Most companies treat social engagement tactics as content metrics only. That’s a miss.

Once a month, pull:

• top 20 questions you received (comments + DMs)
• most common objections
• repeated competitor mentions
• posts that triggered “I need this” intent

Use AI to summarize and cluster. Then feed it into:

• your next month’s content calendar
• your sales talk track
• your onboarding checklist

This is how social media marketing for small business stops being “posting” and becomes a revenue system.

A practical 30-day plan (IRL + AI + social) for small teams

You don’t need a massive customer success org to act like one. Here’s a plan I’ve seen work with lean teams.

Week 1: Choose your “IRL targets”

• Identify your top 10 customers (or top 10%).
• Identify 5 local small accounts you can visit quickly.
• Identify 5 late-stage prospects where an in-person meeting could close the deal.

Week 2: Build the meeting rhythm

• Schedule 3 customer meetings (2 virtual, 1 IRL).
• Add a standard agenda: goals, blockers, success metrics, next steps.
• Start recording/transcribing calls so insights don’t evaporate.

Week 3: Connect social to customer success

• Publish two LinkedIn posts that reflect what you learned (without naming customers).
• Invite replies: “If you’re dealing with X, tell me what’s breaking.”
• Route responses into your feedback tracker.

Week 4: Make decisions, not just notes

• Pick one onboarding fix you can ship this month.
• Pick one expansion play for top accounts (training, add-on, new workflow rollout).
• Pick one content theme for next month based on real objections.

If you do just that, you’ll feel the compounding effect: better positioning, smoother adoption, higher retention, and more referrals.

The stance I’ll defend: meet fewer people, but make each meeting count

Lemkin’s point—meet as many as you can—is directionally right. But the modern version for 2026 is more disciplined:

• Meet the customers who can change your revenue trajectory.
• Use AI to scale listening and pattern detection.
• Use social media as a continuous feedback channel, not a vanity channel.

And if you’ve been waiting to restart IRL because Zoom “works fine,” you’re probably giving competitors an opening. Someone else is showing up.

If you want to pressure-test your customer meeting plan, ask yourself: Which 10 customers would hurt the most to lose this quarter—and when did you last sit with them face-to-face?