Take useful notes during a meeting and keep your attention on the buyer.
Before your next discovery meeting, take one sheet of paper or open a blank document and write six headings on it: situation, problems, impact, urgency, decision, next step. Notes that land under the same headings every time are easier to take during the meeting and much easier to use afterwards. You'll need them for the discovery summary in lesson 7.1, "Write the discovery summary the buyer signs off", and for the proposal and your scorecard.
Notes go wrong in two ways. The first is taking none. You rely on memory, and by the time you write the summary that evening you have lost the buyer's exact words and half the numbers. The second is taking too many. You type through the meeting with your eyes on the laptop, the buyer ends up talking to the top of your head, and their answers get shorter. Good notes sit between the two. They capture what the summary and proposal need, in the buyer's words, while you stay in the conversation.
A fixed template is a one-page layout with the same six headings every meeting, plus a margin column for signals. With it, you are not deciding mid-meeting where to put something, and you can see at a glance what you have not covered yet. The order of the headings follows the meeting structure from lesson 2.2, "The question funnel: from wide to specific", and the headings match what the summary and scorecard will need.
Wei Ling, a seller in an invented example, puts the six headings down the left side of an A4 page with space beside each. She keeps a narrow margin column for signals: repeated words, skipped topics and pauses.
Choose paper or a device before the meeting. Paper is often easier on the relationship than a laptop because it does not sit between you like a screen. If you use a laptop or tablet, say what you are doing as you go: "I'm just typing that number in."
At the start of the meeting, ask whether you can take notes and say why: "Do you mind if I take a few notes as we go? I don't want to miss anything." Almost everyone says yes. Asking does three things. It tells the buyer their words matter enough to write down. It explains in advance why you will sometimes look down. It also makes the notebook or laptop part of the agreed meeting instead of a barrier between you.
If you want to record the meeting, instead of notes or as well as them, ask separately and clearly, and respect the answer. Some buyers accept notes but not a recording.
For problems and goals, write what the buyer said rather than your interpretation of it. Say a buyer tells you, "Month end is a nightmare, I'm up till two in the morning." You might write "inefficient reconciliation process". That is accurate, but it won't help when you write the summary. The buyer needs to recognise their own situation in the summary, and their own words are what let them do that. Sales foundations lesson 3.3, "Summarise back what you heard", made the same point about spoken summaries.
You don't need everything word for word. Write the exact words for three things: the problem, its impact, and what the buyer wants instead. Put them in quotation marks so you know later which words were theirs and which were yours. Write numbers, names and dates down exactly.
The margin column holds the signals from lesson 6.1, "Hear what the buyer does not say". Mark a repeated word with a tally, a skipped topic with a question mark and a pause with a small "p". These are the points you plan to come back to later in the meeting.
Daniel, the contractor from lesson 6.1, meets Wei Ling. By the end of the meeting her impact box reads "used most of savings last year, client didn't pay 3 months". Her margin reads "steady x3", which means the word "steady" came up three times. It also reads "wife's income: 'that's separate' p", which is Daniel's own words with a pause marked after them. Her decision box is nearly empty, which tells her what she still needs to ask before they finish.
Look up between notes. Long silences while you write or type make the buyer feel you have stopped listening, and they will often stop talking to wait for you. Write short, a word or two and a number, then look up. Do your writing while the buyer is still talking about something you already understand, and avoid writing when they are starting something new.
If you need a moment for a longer point, say so first: "Hang on, I want to get that exactly right." Then write, then look up. Saying it first turns the gap into a sign of respect for what they just told you.
Don't write during the silences from lesson 6.2, "Use silence instead of filling it". That is when the buyer is most likely to add something, and they will only add it if you look ready to hear it.
Five minutes before the meeting ends, glance at the template. Any empty box is a question you still need to ask, the way Wei Ling's nearly empty decision box was for her.
Within an hour of the meeting, read through your notes. Fill in anything you remember but did not write, and mark anything you are unsure about. This takes about five minutes and saves a lot of guesswork when you sit down to write the summary.
Because the template is the same every time, your notes are easy to compare across meetings. After a few meetings, look back across them. If one box, decision for example, is always the emptiest, that is the part of your discovery that needs work.
Before the activity, decide whether you will take notes on paper or on a device, and find a page or a document you can turn into your template.
Make a one-page note template with headings for situation, problems, impact, urgency, decision and next step. Use it in your next meeting.
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