Efficient meeting prep BPs

Sure, if you had three hours to prepare for each pitch meeting, you would. But given that you are always rushed, you don’t. So…what does efficient meeting prep look like for your customer interactions?

Focus your meeting prep on understanding the company’s challenges and needs. The more you learn about their gaps – be it strategy or execution (or both) – the better you’ll be at creating solutions for them.

Note: Perusing LinkedIn buyer profiles doesn’t help you understand what keeps them up at night. Nor does it qualify as proper prep.

Focus on these tasks to elevate your meeting prep game:

1. Watch YouTube videos of the company’s CEO (and other executives) to glean insights about their strategies.

2. Participate in a retail experience with the company to learn how they market and execute.

3. Ask Chat to summarize how your prospect sits amongst their competitors…strengths, weaknesses, and all of that stuff. (Stock performance, etc.)

4. Call three friends who know the main customer on the buy side to find out anything you can about how that person ticks and thinks.

In this charming and fantastical four-minute clip from Dave, Kevin Kline plays the President who comes to a budget meeting very prepared… and focused.

And while we all know it doesn’t work like this in the Oval Office, it does show how your new formula for meeting prep can pay off: prepare specifically against the right things, and have a plan going in!