I often ask entrepreneurs I’m meeting for the first time to imagine that our meeting just ended and it was a great success from their point of view. Then I ask, “What made this such a great meeting for you?”
It is a dependable way to guide a conversation to a meaningful outcome and lead entrepreneurs away from the Tyranny of the Pitch Deck. But strangely enough, no entrepreneur has ever asked me that same question back. Were someone to do so, I would tell them that the meeting went great because the entrepreneur had already completed five tasks that made them stand out from the scores of deals we see weekly. Here are those five tasks.
