Now it’s time to figure out how you’re going to achieve your objectives.
Internal pre-meeting discussion
This is where you discuss the meeting in advance with your peers, boss, mentor, and those attending the meeting. Bring them up to speed on what has transpired thus far and ask for their thoughts on the situation.
Prepare the presentation or sell sheets
Prepare visual aids for the meeting. It’s essential to provide the client with a visual of what you’re proposing. If your company does not have this, then create it yourself. You can have printed handouts, but often having this information on a tablet or laptop is more effective.
Leverage relationships
Now is the time to determine how to position the relationships that you identified when you were researching in Step 1.
What will you say at the beginning and end of the meeting?
Memorize what you will say at the beginning of the meeting. Things like your introduction, the agenda for the meaning, the purpose of the meeting, etc. At the end of the meeting, you can provide a quick recap and discuss the next steps. And as I mentioned in Step 2, there should always be at least one next step.
What questions will you ask?
You should have a few standard questions memorized. Write down any unique questions that are specific to the client. See my post on How to Run a Successful First Meeting for examples of questions you can ask.
