The most underrated tip to succeed in your startup job
There’s probably an infinite amount of ways to be successful in your startup job. In fact, if you subscribe long enough, I might get through all of them one day 😃
But today, I’m talking about the most underrated tip to succeed. This habit will help you:
close more deals
get promoted faster
better understand your business as a marketer
and overall, feel more confident meeting with, well, anyone
I’m talking about (drumroll please…) being prepared for meetings. Just be ready for the conversation. That’s it.
This may seem like a boring and perhaps obvious answer but it’s the truth! I told you this was going to be underrated! Let ‘meeting preparedness’ have its 15 minutes of fame!
I realized the power of this helpful tip when I shared this tweet and Alaina - a super-talented creator I follow - asked for tips on improving close rates.
I knew my answer immediately. Being prepared for key meetings was the biggest reason why I won more clients.
My consulting sales process is pretty simple. After an introduction - usually on twitter or LinkedIn - we’ll set up a meeting if we want to move forward. Next I’ll create the proposal and then we’ll have a proposal review meeting. Those are the 2 main sales meetings I have to prepare for.
Here’s what I do:
Take 30-90 minutes to review the initial conversation, research the prospect and their company, and get down any questions, ideas, or other notes. Try not to do this right before the meeting. It’s better than nothing but doing it the day before or several hours earlier will keep you calmer in the meeting while still retaining the info. The more time you spend will probably correlate with the level of importance…
Write out your questions for the prospect in the order you want the conversation to go. For proposal meetings, I usually keep all budget and timeline questions towards the end if it hasn’t been mentioned yet. There’s also usually a “junk drawer” of questions to ask if time allows (these are non-essential q’s). Also, keep your notes in front of you during every meeting.
That’s pretty much it. Nothing too fancy but super effective.
Writing out the questions is so valuable for me. It makes me anticipate objections or other questions from the prospect a lot easier. This gives me a chance to draft up a potential response or find resources to reference long before the question is even asked.
Even if the prospect never asks the question, it’s still important to try and understand them as much as possible. That’s what marketers do!
Underrated and ~~versatile~~
I just wrote a lot about activities most aligned with a salesperson (proposals, close rate, objection handling). But this tip isn’t just for salespeople or marketing consultants trying to get more clients (and if this is you, hello!). It’s also for anyone who works in a startup.
Preparing for meetings will make you better at your job.
By taking some time to think about the meeting ahead, you will:
have answers ready to go for your boss in your next 1:1
present your monthly analytics in a clear, concise manner
significantly improve the efficiency of your next campaign launch
come up with a few more ideas for your client’s marketing plan
These are all just ideas but you get the point. You can prepare for as many or as little meetings as you like. I recommend starting with the biggest ones first since you really should prepare for those anyway. Or start small to get the habit going! Whatever works for you.
I hope most of you already have a fantastic habit of this. But for those who don’t, try doing what I mentioned above for your next big meeting. Ask yourself:
Are there questions I will likely be asked? How will I respond?
How do I want the order of the conversation to go?
What is most important to this meeting?
If needed, are there resources that will back up what I have to say in this meeting?
No time to prepare?
We all know startups move fast. We also know processes and systems can be hard to come by. It can be a tough decision to stop what you’re doing just to create a process for that very same thing.
But you know the repeatable process will save everyone time in the end.
Preparing for meetings is the same way. You will save more time and be more successful by taking the time to prepare for meetings.
And so you may be saying to yourself “Yeah Connor this is great and all, but I’m literally going from meeting to meeting every single day. I don’t have the time!”
First, that sucks and is probably really stressful. Second, that’s not okay! If you don’t have time to do all your work or prepare for meetings, there is an issue with your company’s organizational culture and business operations.
This should be brought up with leadership because it can be a huge time suck. Too many meetings = inefficient meetings = ineffective meeting outputs.
One way you can resolve this in your team is to take an hour and do an audit of your meeting schedule. Ask yourself:
What weekly meetings do I have? What about each member of my team?
Are there redundant meetings?
Can we reduce meeting times? Extend them? Consolidating multiple meetings into a longer, 1 hour meeting may save time in your week. (pro tip: slack channels are great ways to democratize information. wrote about this a bit last time.)
How many times do I wonder if this could have just been an email?
As the team grows, control over meeting volume can spiral out of control. It’s good to do a regular check-in on this to make sure people are meeting intentionally and with all the relevant people.
That’s all I got for this week! How has everything been going? Any big projects ahead of you?
See you in a couple weeks!
-Connor