Preparing is the biggest equalizer.

If you do a detailed preparation for a client meeting, you’ll beat out people with more experience who show up based on what they know.

That’s the quickest way to build trust.

Come overly prepared.

Do a deep dive on everyone’s background before a meeting.

Look up where they worked, who they worked for, their experience with your solutions, quotes online, personal facts, company information, recent trips, industry trends, etc.

If showing up is half the battle, preparation is the other half.

Find out everything you can about someone, their company, or their product before meeting.

You’ll be treated differently.

The other side of preparation is knowing what questions you’re going to ask, what the agenda looks like, the flow of the conversation, and a detailed plan for next steps.

AI makes this easy now.

It’s not hard to look like an all-star anymore.

Use Anthropic – Claude, or Gemini to help you build this out.

Use this prompt: “I’m Head of Private Equity at x company. I’m meeting x person at x firm and I’m looking to achieve x (long-term partnership, introduction to someone on their team, etc.) from this meeting. Please provide a detailed breakdown of the person’s background, likes, work history, previous experience with my company, articles they’ve written, where they’ve been quoted, any possible piece of information you can find that would help me with my goal of x.”

From there, edit through asking questions and have your AI of choice create a one pager you can use for the prep before your meeting.

You can have AI create a sample agenda for the meeting too.

It’s not difficult or time consuming anymore, but it is important.

Not everyone will do it.

If you do, you’ll be ahead of the majority of people.

Soon, this will be done for you automatically when scheduling a call by your own personal agent – if it’s not done already.

For now, just try slightly harder than most.