You will be able to run a full practice first meeting with a partner and review it against a checklist.
Rachel sells a monthly meal-prep subscription. Before her first practice meeting, she wrote a short brief for her partner, who played a buyer called Daniel, and she recorded the whole conversation.
Most people who sell have never heard a recording of themselves selling. Memory is generous. You remember your good questions and forget the four minutes you spent explaining a feature nobody asked about. A recording keeps all of it, so listening back is the fastest way to improve. In this exercise you run a full practice first meeting with a partner, record it and then review it against a five-point checklist. It takes about forty minutes: ten to prepare, fifteen to twenty for the meeting, and fifteen to review. You need a partner, a quiet room or a video call, and a phone or laptop that can record.
Your partner plays the buyer and works from a brief you write. Keep it to half a page at most. It needs three things: who the buyer is (age, job, one line of background), a real problem your product could help with, described in the buyer's own words, and one hidden concern.
A hidden concern is something the buyer is worried about but won't mention unless you ask the right question or build enough trust to bring it out. It must be one of the four concerns from lesson 5.2: price, trust, timing, or someone else who needs to agree.
Give your partner the brief and keep a copy for yourself. Fold your copy so you can't see the hidden concern. A better option is to have your partner write their own hidden concern on a sticky note and keep it until the review, so you don't know what it is during the meeting.
Rachel's brief described Daniel as 32 and a project manager at a logistics firm at Changi. He and his wife both work late and order food delivery most nights. He wants to eat better and spend less. He has tried cooking on Sundays, but it never lasts past the second week. Her partner wrote the hidden concern on a sticky note: Daniel's wife thinks subscriptions are a waste of money, and he would need her to agree. This is the "someone else who needs to agree" type of concern.
Before you start, ask your partner's permission to record. Say it out loud at the start of the recording so the permission is captured. Then run the meeting using the shape from lesson 5.1, "The shape of a good first meeting": agree the agenda, ask about the buyer's situation, check the fit honestly, and agree a next step.
Your partner stays in character and answers as a real buyer would. They don't volunteer the hidden concern. It can come out naturally if you ask a question that gets near it, or if your partner feels comfortable enough with you to mention it.
Don't pause the role-play to ask whether something was right. If you lose your place, recover as you would with a real buyer. A practice call that keeps stopping teaches you less than one that runs badly all the way through.
Listen back to the full recording with your partner, and don't skip ahead. Score each of the five points below as done, partly done or missed, and note the minute in the recording where it happened.
Agenda agreed: you stated the time and the purpose, asked permission to ask questions, and asked what the buyer wanted to cover. Open questions: most of your questions began with "what", "how" or "tell me about", and you followed up on the buyer's own words. Summary: before moving to the product, you played back what you heard and let the buyer correct it. Fit check: you said clearly what you could help with and what you could not. Next step: the meeting ended with an action, an owner and a date, as described in lesson 5.3.
Rachel's agenda took ninety seconds and was clean, so she scored it as done. Her questions were open for the first five minutes. Once she got nervous they turned closed, for example when she asked whether he would be interested in the four-meal plan, so that point was partly done. She skipped the summary entirely, which counts as missed. Her fit check was honest because she told him the plan would not help with lunches at work, so that was done. Her next step was "I'll send you the menu," with no date, which counts as missed. Her final score was two done, one partly done and two missed.
After scoring, your partner reveals the sticky note. If the concern came up, note what made it surface. If it didn't, go back through the recording and find the moment it nearly did. There is almost always a moment like that. Finding it is the most useful part of the review, because it shows you exactly what you missed and what you could have asked instead.
Ask your partner too. Partners often say you were close at a particular moment, for example when you asked about budget.
At minute nine of Rachel's recording, Daniel said he would have to see what his wife thinks about the menu. Rachel heard "menu" and offered to send it. She missed the words "my wife thinks." A follow-up such as "What do you think she'd want to know?" might have opened the whole conversation.
A finished review has four parts: the recording, a five-point score with minute marks, the hidden concern and the point where it came up or could have, and a list of things you noticed. The list of things you noticed will probably be long. That is normal for a first recording and nothing to worry about.
Write your partner's brief tonight, book forty minutes with them this week while module 5 is fresh, and then work through the activity below.
Run and record the practice call, score it on the five-point checklist, and write down the one thing you will change next time.
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