At this point in my life I have acquired a lot of meetings and been in front of some pretty serious people. I have learned that there is an art to having a good and productive meeting with a potential client/partner and it is a skill similar to being a good actor. I touched on the importance of meetings briefly in a previous article, but I felt that the anatomy of a good meeting deserved a greater explanation.

An initial meeting usually goes one of three ways in my experience.

1. Synergies with potential benefits to all parties, definite second meeting
2. Possible synergies but wrong department, maybe get a follow up with the right people
3. Waste of Time

As I went to more and more meetings I realized that a lot of them tended to be a waste of time. People going through the motions to fill their day, stroking each other’s ego so to speak. This is where the screening process comes into play.

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I just set up my blog with the always so awesome Technorati service, take a look at my new Technorati Profile.

If you are really in business then you must of herd of something called network marketing. Probably one of the first and most popular companies in this space was AMWAY, you may have herd of them on TV or even in some movies. For instance the Movie “GO” had a scene where the policeman and his wife were trying to convince the gay actors to join the company under them, among other things.

What is Network Marketing?

It is commonly referred to a pyramid scheme and most of them are, even if disguised as something else. The concept is simple. There is usually some sort of product or system that the company pushes as this new niche which is only available to them. I call this part the story, “our founder worked under some of the top ____ for years and now he has started this opportunity to allow you as an individual to get in on the action”, Right…

Then they tell you the breakdown on how you will make money. This is the real pitch of the opportunity and it always looks like a sweet payoff. There are many different ways to join, sometimes there is a fee other times you just need to become a customer. Whatever way you look at it, they are asking you to give them something to join and this is where they make the money. You will be told that the real money is in you becoming a successful distributor, in most cases this is false. This type of business organization relies on more and more people being a part of it to build it up. Getting people to join is the main focus of activities (with their weekly feel good meetings) and putting these people under them is where they get the residual.

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We all know that contacts help in business, the right ones anyway. Too many times I have been to meetings where everyone thinks we are in the right place talking to the right person when we are really not. The problem is that big companies have so many employees and VP’s and blabla that it is easy to get confused with it all.

I have two schools of thought when it comes to this:

1. Pitch until you find the right person and hope for the right meeting
2. Be in the “boys club” or know someone in the club

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