“Good preparation is half the job.”
These kinds of delicious tile wisdoms still apply. Whether it’s a conversation with a potential partner or customer, renovating your home or a holiday to a distant destination, preparing is really best recommended. Preparation is also very important with business conversations, or perhaps especially in more business-like conversations.
If you are well prepared for an appointment at the table, whether that is in a personal meeting or a digital appointment, the conversation goes a lot better. Nothing more annoying than starting a conversation with someone who hasn’t done their homework and you can explain everything from the start. But the other way around, of course, the same applies, if you arrive at your appointment well prepared, the other person immediately has the idea that you are a serious interlocutor.
So always do your research before the first interview. See if you can find clues or questions on LinkedIn. Maybe you have a common interest or she has written an interesting piece that you can refer to. On the one hand, of course, that is a compliment to your interlocutor, but on the other hand it also gives you insight into what she is doing, what she thinks is important or how she sees the future. This can help you to make a connection with your interlocutor in your conversations.
Don’t forget to look at the company and do research on it. What do they do, what are they known for, what is the vision of the company and of course it could also be that you know people at that company. Whether it’s Shell being a freelance consultant, both have a vision and a purpose with which they come out. The first will be more extensive than the second, make sure you take note of this before entering into the conversation.
When we write research, it doesn’t mean you have to spend days scouring Google for details, posting at the door (that’s called stalking) or putting an extreme amount of time into it. No, what we mean is to take a moment, even if that’s only half an hour, to delve into your interlocutor. Believe us, that can be a very valuable investment.
After the first conversation, you already know a lot more about your interlocutor and her company. First of all, you did research before the interview. You know what she put on social media like on LinkedIn and maybe wrote, you went through the company page. And, of course, you had the conversation. The first part is easy to write down in your CRM. For this you can of course use a simple CRM system where you can easily save a link to the LinkedIn page of your contact person, where you can leave some notes of your research, and where you write down a small conversation report afterwards. You do that, so that for the next conversation, you can quickly take this to be aware of exactly what you discussed last time.
What always works well, of course, is if you come across an interesting article between times and forward it by email. This is useful if this email is automatically linked to your contact in the CRM, so that you also have it with you on the next call. Without you having to think about what you want to store this on, but that the smart CRM system does that for you.
In short, do research on your contact partner, write down what you think and make sure that you go through this again just before the conversation so that you have a good idea of what you have discussed and what your research has yielded. And finally, after your conversation, make a quick note of what you have discussed and what you have agreed. A reflection of your own what you thought of the conversation is also very useful.
Good luck preparing your next conversation!