Elite 5-Minute Prep

Everyone knows they should prep. Before the big ones, they do.

But on the average Tuesday, with a full calendar & back-to-back calls, that discipline is the first thing to slip. You tell yourself you’ll be fine, so you hop on the link & wing it !

Here’s the thing. The calls you wing are the calls you get slopppyy. And prep isn’t the 2-hour deep dive you’re picturing. For me, 5 minutes does most of the heavy lifting.

Here’s what those 5 minutes actually look like.

That’s it. Moments of work. And with AI, it’s quicker than ever.

When I prep like this, 2 things change the shape of the whole call.

First, I write the names down before I dial. Not “the CEO” or “the VP of Ops”. Mary. Michael. Shauna. Say a real name out loud before the call & something shifts. You stop feeling like an outsider asking to be let in, and start sounding like someone who already belongs in the conversation. And you’ve set yourself up to Multithread from call 1.

Second, I set an intention. One line: here’s what I want this call to open up. Now you’re never scrambling mid-conversation, fishing for the next question. You’re steering it.

Most AEs who wing it are simply slammed. Back-to-back, no gaps. But slammed is exactly when those 5 minutes pay you back the most.

This is Fundamental #1 for a reason. Get the prep right & everything downstream, the Discovery, the Multithreading, the Deal Control, gets easier.

Take Reuben at Kantata. First-time AE, freshly stepped up from BDR, and drowning in the complexity of mid-market & enterprise deals. We rebuilt his approach from the ground up, starting with how he turned up to a call. Prepared. Deliberate. Knowing who sat inside the account before he ever dialled. He closed his first ever deal: £49,250.