Use this when: You have a qualified prospect meeting tomorrow (or in an hour). You want to walk in ready, not winging it. Most sellers spend zero minutes preparing for calls. Five minutes of research makes you sound like a genius.
You're done when: You can reference something specific about the prospect's business, role, or recent activity within the first 60 seconds of the call — and you have a clear objective for what this meeting should accomplish.
The Sequence
1. Apply the 10% rule
Your prep time should be roughly 10% of the call length for routine meetings. A 30-minute call gets 3 minutes of prep. A 60-minute call gets 6 minutes. This ratio inverts for high-stakes meetings: a quarterly business review or a board-level presentation might get 6 hours of prep for a 1-hour meeting. The rule keeps you from two extremes: zero prep (most people) and over-preparation (diminishing returns).
- Deliverable: A time block on your calendar before the call, sized at 10% of the meeting duration.
- Common mistake: Not preparing at all. The difference between "tell me about your company" and "I noticed you just hired three engineers — are you scaling the platform team?" is five minutes of LinkedIn.
2. Research the person
Spend 2-3 minutes on the prospect's LinkedIn profile. Look for:
- Current role and how long they've been in it (new in role = more open to change)
- Previous companies (shared connections, shared context)
- Recent posts or activity (a post about a challenge they're facing is a gift)
- Any shared background (same school, same city, same industry)
You're not memorizing their resume. You're finding one thing you can reference naturally that signals: I cared enough to look you up. People trust people who know things about them, because knowledge approximates friendship.
- Deliverable: One personal hook you'll use in the first 60 seconds.
- Common mistake: Forced personalization. Mentioning their dog's name is creepy. Referencing their recent post about a business challenge is relevant.
3. Research the company
Spend 2-3 minutes on the company. Check:
- What they sell and to whom
- Company size and growth trajectory (are they hiring? Recently funded?)
- Recent news (product launches, partnerships, leadership changes)
- Their top 3 likely problems based on stage and industry
Ask yourself: if you were the CEO of this company, what would keep you up at night? What would your next board meeting focus on? The prospect will be impressed not because you know facts about their company, but because you've thought about their situation from their perspective.
- Deliverable: A one-sentence hypothesis about their biggest current challenge.
- Common mistake: Researching the company without forming a point of view. Knowing they raised a Series B is a fact. Knowing that Series B companies in their space typically struggle with scaling ops — that's insight.
4. Set your meeting objective
Every meeting needs a single clear outcome. Not "have a great conversation" but a specific next step:
- Book a second call with the decision-maker
- Get agreement to run a pilot
- Collect technical requirements for a proposal
- Get a verbal yes and send the contract
Write the objective down. If the meeting ends without achieving it, you need to know that immediately so you can course-correct before hanging up.
- Deliverable: One sentence: "This meeting is successful if ___."
- Common mistake: Going into a call with a vague goal. "Learn more about their needs" is not an objective. "Confirm budget and timeline, then book a demo with their team" is.
5. Prepare a pre-call touch
Send something before the meeting that increases the chance they show up and primes the conversation. Options:
- A short personalized video or voice memo referencing something specific to them
- A relevant article, case study, or benchmark from their industry
- A preference question: "What time zone works best?" or "Any specific topics you want to cover?"
Preference questions are especially effective for show rates. When someone has answered a question about the meeting, they've committed to it psychologically. They're less likely to no-show because "this person already put effort in for me."
- Deliverable: A pre-call touchpoint sent 24 hours before the meeting.
- Common mistake: Sending a generic calendar confirmation and nothing else. A 30-second video saying "Looking forward to tomorrow — I noticed [specific thing] and want to talk about how we might help" takes no time and dramatically changes how the prospect shows up.
Template
Example
A founder had a demo call with the VP of Operations at a 200-person logistics company. Five minutes before the call, she checked LinkedIn: the VP had been in the role for 4 months (new hire, likely mandated to improve something) and had posted about the pain of managing 30 carrier relationships manually. She checked the company's careers page: three ops roles open, signaling they were scaling and probably breaking processes. Her meeting objective: confirm the manual carrier management pain and book a technical demo with the VP's team lead. She opened the call with "I saw you recently posted about managing 30 carrier relationships — is that still the core bottleneck, or has the priority shifted since you posted that?" The VP spent 10 minutes describing the problem in detail. The demo was booked before the 20-minute mark. Total prep time: 5 minutes.
Written with ❤️ by a human (still)