Don’t Go Into A Meeting Without These Three Things

I wasn’t ready until my mentor pulled out a blank card, a little larger than a business card, and asked me this question. Before I talk about the question he asked me, let me back up a little. It was five months earlier, as a senior product manager at Adobe, I went to the senior vice president of sales and told him I wanted to license PostScript to a specific major company. He literally fell off his chair laughing. Then he handed me a 5-inch binder full of business cards from this company, told me he had been trying to do this for 4 years, and said "good luck."



I set his binder aside and called into the company asking for the product manager. After a few days I tracked him down. He agreed to meet at a relatively unknown burrito place hidden deep in the back of a low rent store that catered to the local Mexicans. We met there for four months. During our meetings I was able to build a case why his company would benefit from licensing PostScript. He had thought about this a few times on his own prior to our conversations, but couldn’t convince himself it was a win for his company. And given the extreme competitiveness between the companies, the business case had to be rock solid or he would lose credibility by just bringing the idea up.



We both believed the business case was solid so he arranged a meeting with a group of 15 managers, directors, and principle engineers within his company. I would be presenting as an outsider and he would be on the other side of the fence as a naysayer and not revealing we had been working together on this. His company, after all, had created their own version of PostScript and didn’t feel they needed anything from Adobe.



I was getting ready to present the pitch to the group and was not feeling very well prepared. I had done my homework, put the return on investment details together, understood their business and business objectives, and clearly understood the business case, but still felt unprepared. I asked my mentor, a very well respected and successful sales guy at Adobe, to help me figure out why I didn’t feel prepared. When we sat down together, my mentor pulled out a blank card, a little larger than a business card, and asked me this question—"what are the three objectives or outcomes of this meeting you will achieve?"



Well, I said, I want them to license PostScript. That is when he explained the sales process to me. "Yes", he said, "that is the ultimate goal, however, the people in this room cannot write the check, they can only agree to the idea and make recommendations. The CEO will write the check."



The message was clear, just focus on the objectives of this meeting. This simplified my objectives:



1. Acknowledge their work on PostScript had pushed the technology forward;

2. Unique developments they had made would be incorporated into PostScript;

3. Demonstrate a clear return on investment for them by eliminating the redundant work between the companies and the benefit of working together on PostScript enabling them to deploy their resources on other important projects within their company.



This was it. Everything I had prepared supported these objectives, yet, I had not written these down anywhere. Now, equipped with the objectives anchored in my mind, I slipped the piece of paper into my pocket and went to the meeting.



The meeting started very rough. I hadn’t even finished introducing myself when the negative comments began. They called my company arrogant, incompetent, and other very destructive names. I held my ground. With every comment, I went back to my anchors, the three objectives. I would emphasize one of the three as a response to each objection. Finally, several hours later, the meeting was over.



Although I thought the effort may have been a lost cause due to the conversations I heard during the meeting, I felt I had put my best foot forward and was confident I presented the best I possibly could have. A few days later my contact at the company called me and said after many heated internal meetings they were ready to take the next step. About a month later the CEO signed a check for $20 million dollars!



All the preparation in the world is not a substitute for a lack of clear objectives. You will still find me with a piece of white paper in my pocket when I enter a meeting. On this piece of paper I have written my three objectives for the meeting.



Dano Ybarra is a global executive, serial entrepreneur, father, husband and Internet pioneer. To learn more about Dano Ybarra and to read, view or listen to this article please visit www.danoybarra.com. You can subscribe to any of the available formats of the article at this site.The original post can be found at http://bit.ly/fZiW58