Preparing for meetings with potential clients can be tricky. The more you know, the easier it is to anticipate the questions they want answered, but sometimes that’s just a smokescreen and you should be talking about other things instead.

I think the expectations of a typical pitch-like meeting is troublesome, because it doesn’t necessarily invite conversation to such an extent that the core of the problem, the needs, or the proof of value can be reached. That means that clients pick agencies and partners prematurely, and vice versa. Pitch meetings should be paid for, and they should be conversations where you felt it worthwhile to share knowledge, because not only could that land you the gig, you got paid even if it didn’t. It’s all too common for clients to take the best from each participant in a pitch, and give it all to the winner, without any regard to the time and effort spent. It’s a broken system.

Typical thoughts while waiting for dinner to arrive, right?