I’ll admit it; I talk to myself. Sometimes in the mirror. How embarrassing! If you aren’t already weird like me, give it a try.
Record yourself pitching
This is an excellent time to observe all of the ahhs, umms, and other fillers that you say. Try to remove these from your vocabulary. If you don’t know what you’re going to say next, rather than use a filler, it would be better to say nothing or say, “let me think about that.” Now is also a good time to put yourself in the client’s shoes and ask if you would buy from you.
Visualize the ideal meeting
It sounds crazy, but this works. Close your eyes and picture exactly how you want the meeting to go. Don’t get me wrong; the meeting may not go exactly the way you visualize. It probably won’t go exactly the way you want it to, but you’re more likely to be successful if you visualize a successful outcome.
Memorize your value proposition (a.k.a. talk track)
Think of the questions the client is most likely to ask and be prepared to answer them. What would you want to know if you were the client? A good example of a question a client will ask is, “what’s different about your company?”. Memorize the answer to this question. If you stumble on this one you may ruin your chance of making a great first impression.
Review helpful references & reminders
When you learn something new, it is often difficult to remember it while you’re in a client meeting. It may help to create a cheat sheet to remind yourself about the new skills that you want to implement. For example, I once took a course on body language. I would always forget to leverage this new knowledge in the meeting. I decided to list several body language techniques in the Notes app on my phone, and I would read this just before I went into each meeting. Problem solved.
