Why the first two minutes decide the whole meeting

You will be able to open a discovery meeting with an agreement on time, purpose, the buyer's agenda and possible outcomes.

Think about the last sales meeting that went nowhere. Chances are it did not fall apart at the end. It fell apart in the first two minutes, when nobody said what the meeting was for and both of you filled the silence with whatever you had planned, which for you meant the product and for them meant waiting to see if any of it applied. Forty minutes later you were both being polite and neither of you knew what should happen next.

A discovery meeting has one job: to find out whether the buyer has a problem worth solving, and whether you are the right person to help solve it. Everything in this course serves that job. But the job only gets done if the buyer knows it is the job, and agrees to it, before you ask your first real question.

That is what an agenda does at the start of a meeting. Forget the slide with bullet points; what you want is a short spoken agreement that covers four things.

The first is time. Confirm how long the buyer has, even if it was in the calendar invite. Plans change, and a buyer who has to leave in fifteen minutes will not tell you unless asked. If the time has shrunk, you can reshape the meeting now instead of rushing the most important part.

The second is purpose, said in terms of them. Not today I would like to show you what we do, but the aim today is to understand how you handle payroll at the moment and whether there is anything worth changing.

The third is their agenda. Ask what they want to get out of the meeting. This one question does more than any other to change the tone, because it tells the buyer the meeting is partly theirs. Often the answer is the most useful thing you hear all day: I want to know whether this works with our current accounting tool, or my wife thinks we are underinsured and I want a second opinion.

The fourth is the possible outcomes, and this is the part most sellers skip. Say plainly that at the end, one of a few things will happen. Maybe you both see a good fit and set up a next meeting, or maybe there is no fit, and that is fine. Giving the buyer explicit permission to say no lowers their guard, and it makes a clear yes far more likely.

Sales trainers call this agreement by different names. The Sandler system calls it an up-front contract, a mutual agreement at the start of a meeting about time, purpose, each side's agenda and the possible outcomes. Skip the term if it feels stiff, and never make it sound like a legal document, but keep all four parts.

Here is how it might sound with a cafe owner meeting a bookkeeper. Thanks for making time. We said 45 minutes, does that still work? Great. I would like to understand how your books are handled at the moment and where it causes you trouble. What would make this worth your time from your side? At the end, if it looks like I can help, we can talk about what that would look like. If not, I will tell you, and I might point you to someone better suited.

That took about thirty seconds. It set the purpose, gave the buyer a stake in the meeting, and made it safe for them to be honest. It also gave you permission to ask questions, which you will need for everything that follows in this course.

Two things make the opening fail. One is rushing it because you are nervous and want to get to the content. The other is asking what they want to cover and then ignoring the answer. If the buyer says they want to know about integration with their accounting tool, write it down and make sure you address it before the meeting ends.

Your task for this lesson: write the opening you will use in your next discovery meeting, covering time, purpose, their agenda and the possible outcomes. Say it out loud and time it, then cut it until it runs under 45 seconds.

Write your four-part opening for your next discovery meeting, say it aloud with a timer, and cut it until it runs under 45 seconds.

Course

• Discovery: questions that find the real problem