Meeting Two

So the next meeting that I had went quite a bit better. The person that I met with was brought in by someone who kinda knew our business. They had done a better job preparing. Yet a couple of things were missed; Verifying the appointment, research on me or company, and we had the 62 (Literally) page PowerPoint presentation printed out. Sorry if your reading this but you will clearly identify yourself, the print outs were done on an inkjet printer that ran out of ink on the second print. So kinda color, kinda black and white. Not real professional.

Not a lot of questions, infact by the end of the meeting, the presenter had to ask what I did for the company. This was probably info you needed to start!

Anyway, here is my list on what should be required for the meeting itself.

1. Professionalism. No curse words, questionable stories or getting too comfortable.
2. Ask what people are expecting out of the presentation. Write them down to make sure you cover their questions.
3. Ask what they know about you. No reason to cover areas that people may already know. Sure you want to make sure the info is correct. But you do not need to spend 20 minutes on what has already been covered by someone else.
4. If you had a previous meeting, verify that nothing has changed since this meeting!
5. Don't waste time unless the person you are presenting to is initiating this.
6. Confirm your next steps/meetings and who is responsible for each.
7. Be genuine and truthful if this isn't a match. You can waste both people's time if your not honest.
8. Do not go over your time allotted. If you feel that everyone is engaged and you need to continue, ask for permission to continue or set another meeting to continue.
9. Don't have a preset agenda that you have to absolutly follow. Move and flow with the questions and direction of the meeting. Sure, have areas that you have to cover. Make notes of the top areas, but don't have some rigid structure.
10. Thank everyone for their time and ask for feedback on the meeting. Try and get honest feedback, not just make you feel better feedback.

Next blog I will cover the followup! This in my opinion is where real relationships are made!