The next time you visit a sports event watch what the participant does before the game begins. If its a football match, chances are the teams will play one-touch between themselves, a track and field event — the athletes will stretch, a music concert — the pianist will play some light pieces, the Ghazal singer will sing an alaap and so on. Every performance be it sport or music requires a process of preparation and every high performing athlete or musician internalises it as part of their warmup.
A Business meeting is a performance and you are the actor, athlete, singer and conductor of that performance! On your next performance follow these principles when preparing:
Connection
Research the other invitees — LinkedIn, Social Media are two easy ways to find out more. The goal of the research is to find a point of connection, some good starting points are:
- Shared hometown or university.
- Language.
- Common friends and acquaintances.
- Hobbies or interests — maybe they have a blog post on a particular topic.
Sometimes a negative connection is also a connection; say someone’s hometown is Kolkata — a good connection might just be that you’ve never been to Kolkata and have always wanted to visit during Durga Puja. Make sure that whatever connection you choose is gender and culture appropriate.
Pre-Meeting
When you show up at a meeting (whether in-person or virtually) there will always be a time-window when the meeting hasn’t started and the various participants are settling themselves. This window is the perfect time to establish a connection with the other participants — use your digital stalking research and frame the initial small talk. If all else fails there’s always the weather or the latest cricket match.
The key here is that this doesn’t have to be a life changing conversation — just an opportunity to interact casually without taking time from the meeting itself.
Tonality
What kind of meeting will this be — is it adversarial, collegial, collaborative or simply an exploration? Spend some time thinking about the atmospherics of this meeting. Are you going to start out — Boom Boom or will it be casual and relaxed? Setting this tonality up in your mind helps you react to the meeting correctly and ensures that when you speak your tone is appropriate for the goals that you have in mind.
Intentions
Ask yourself these questions:
- What are your desired outcomes?
- What do you want to walk away with?
- How do you want to feel?
- How do you want them to feel?
- What does success look like?
Our intentions define our effectiveness and by being clear on what we want to achieve we create the Meeting Corridor. The Meeting Corridor shows us the end result and every time a meeting veers of course if we are clear about where we want to reach, we will make the necessary course corrections.
Opening
What is your opening gambit? If you know that you’ll get the chance to speak first or define the agenda take it! If speaking first decide on the first three lines that will come out of your mouth. Write them down and mug them up!
A common cold-call tactic that works with mid-level corporate executives is the reluctant seller — talk about everything else except what you are trying to pitch. The intended buyer will bring up the sale and you can simply respond to that.
Visualisation & FAQs
Play the meeting in your mind, have some scenarios ready:
- How will you react to an undesirable or unforeseen situation? What is your game plan?
- Step in the shoes of the meeting participants and figure out what to give and what to take.
- We all want to be opening batters — and set the target of the game. But sometimes we have to bowl first! If the agenda has already been set and you have to respond to it — make sure that you put in your desired outcome as a response. Bring the meeting back to your desired outcome. Be flexible and adapt to the situation.
- Raavan Ki Naabhi — What is the Meeting Corridor — how will you bring back the meeting to it? Quite often simply repeating the key points is enough — but make sure you have that ready in your mind.
- Kuch to Bech ke Jaayenge — You walked into a sales call and the prospect tells you they’re not buying your product, not now — not ever! Have something ready, get something out of the time and energy you spent preparing and getting to the meeting. Sometimes it pays to go through your agenda even though the prospect is a reluctant buyer.
- Side Stories — Prepare a few conversational asides that establish or embellish your key points, if given a chance bring them out.
- Tangential Questions — We’ve all been to meetings that start in London and reach Tokyo. They usually start when someone comes up with a point or question not in the same universe as the meeting! Figure out how you want to respond to them — do you put them under the carpet, deflect it or have a sarcastic aside ready?
Sportspeople have a saying don’t focus on the results, concentrate on how to perform your skills under pressure and believe that you have the processes in place to improve your performance. Going into a meeting you have no control on whether you’ll get your outcome — but by preparing for it in a structured manner and ensuring that you do this often enough, these principles become automated in your mind and you can be sure that you will win meetings more often than you lose.
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