Getting a tough customer to open up requires building trust, active listening, empathy, and creating a safe and comfortable environment. In other words, the work you put into setting up the meeting will go far on how you unlock your customer’s voice box.

Your odds of getting them to trust you – and talk – improve if you send an agenda well before your meeting date. (They’ve been burned too many times by sellers who have wasted their time.) But hey, they took the meeting, right?

Make your agenda customer-focused, not you-focused. Create a specific and strategic agenda for your meeting to prove that the time spent with you will offer value to them. That means you need to research what that specific person truly cares about. (Backchannel info hunting, anyone?)

While you’re at it, leak a few of the high-quality questions you’ll ask in the meeting ahead of time in your agenda…that’ll signal to the customer that you are prepared and they are expected to contribute to the meeting.