Meeting Prep, a brief waiting before every sales call

Good sales calls start with ten minutes of homework. Who is this person, what does their company do, have we talked before, and is there an open deal. Most of us do that homework in a rush, or skip it.

Meeting Prep does it for you. Connect your Google Calendar once, and before every one-off meeting with someone outside thoughtbot it books a private prep block with a brief inside. The brief opens with the links you'll want first and whether this is really a first call. Then it covers the people, their company, your history in the CRM, the engagement so far and a plan for the call.

Written for the moment you read it

I read my brief when the prep block starts, thirty minutes before the call, and almost never earlier. So the brief is written once when the meeting is booked, then again just before the prep block starts. It's current when you open it and never changes while you're reading.

If you already make your own prep blocks, it writes into yours instead of adding a second one. Delete a block and it stays deleted.

Fewer no-shows

Most of my sales meetings come in through Calendly, and too many of them used to be no-shows, even with Calendly's own reminders turned on. So Meeting Prep also sends a Slack reminder the evening before and the morning of any meeting where nobody on the other side has accepted. Each one comes with a ready-to-send email to confirm or reschedule. Nothing goes to anyone until you hit send.

That small addition has greatly reduced our no-shows.

Accuracy first

A brief with one wrong fact is worse than no brief. Facts only count when both the name and the company match, so a namesake's career never ends up in front of you. A second pass checks every claim against its sources before you see it.

The question I'm asking is whether the brief is good enough that you stop doing your own research, and which part you'd still check by hand.