Posted on July 23, 2008 - by Jeffrey

The Anatomy of a Good Business Meeting

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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 others ego so to speak. This is where the screening process comes into play.

I’ll admit there were meetings I went to even though I knew we wouldn’t be able to do anything with the clients because it was feeding my ego, but sometimes you need an ego boost. A good rule is just to not let meetings slow down your productivity. It’s OK to feed the ego once in a while, just watch out for that feel good trap where you have a ton of business cards and no deals.

Have a Goal

Another great tip to having a great meeting is to go into the meeting with a specific goal. With my recent company, we implemented this strategy after getting the run around from other companies in our meetings. Think about what you want to get out of the meeting, your angle. I did a recent meeting in NYC with a major player in the newspaper business and I knew the chance of a synergy was small. I was actually against going at first until a partner convinced me to attend and think of it as a way to get information out of them.

So in the meeting, we used a strategy to just pick their brain as to what they were doing in the industry. In the end, we walked away from that meeting with some key knowledge to the industry and felt more confident in our position in the space. We had a goal to learn and educate ourselves; we accomplished it while at the same time creating an illusion of the clients need for us.

The “We Don’t Need You” Attitude

When I talk about business and meetings in passing I usually refer to them as a courting process similar to dating. Think of the “Hot Girl” everyone wanted to date when they were in High School, you want to be that “Hot Girl” so to speak. By creating this feeling of everyone wants me but I could care less, people will feel like they need to be doing something with you whether there are any synergies or not.

At the Meeting… Now What?

So you have a meeting and now it’s time to go and play ball. Since you already have a goal for the meeting as discussed above, it’s time for the game plan.

“If you fail to plan, then plan to fail”

I like to follow a simple structure while at the same time staying flexible if the meeting takes another direction. You never know how much time you will have so it is important to be open to interruptions and/or a chaotic meeting place.

Build Rapport - Winning over the party you’re meeting with is an essential part of any meeting process and a key to developing good relationships. Concentrate on this during the entire meeting, just don’t go too far and come off as a kiss ass.

Introductions - (optional) this part of meeting is the standard ego stroking period. People usually go around the room and talk about their experience and how great they are. To lighten up the mood, I may make a joke at this point. “Well, I am 5′8, Pieces, and I have an appetite for making money”…

Presentation - One of the most important parts of a meeting is your presentation or pitch. Practice what you are going to say and be careful not to give too much information away! Tease them with what you can do, don’t tell them directly.

Their Opinion - I like to ask their opinion on how we can move forward. It’s actually more like I am being assertive and just assuming there is a next step. “Sounds Interesting, where do we go from here?”

Suggestions - This is one of those times you can come off like the “Hot Girl”.

I was in a meeting where we crashed and burned and then they proceeded to tell us what we should be doing and how to do it. It was a nice way of them acting like they were helping us out, when they were really telling us you don’t know what you are doing…or at least that’s what they thought

We took this approach and learned from it. Now I like to do this a little at the end of my meetings. Just be careful to do it with class. The meeting I mentioned above was insulting; there was no genuine feeling behind what they said so it came off pompous.
However when you decide to play this card and suggest something you think they should do, you are going to do it subtly and with class.

Thank You - Always thank them for the meeting even if it ended badly. Be positive and move on if things didn’t work out.

Business is a game, just like life…so play it like one.