An agent that prepares our sales meetings

Preparing a call properly takes twenty minutes. Often we do not have them: we open the prospect's website five minutes before, we have forgotten what was said in the first conversation, and we ask a question whose answer was on their home page.

The prospect notices. A partner's first impression is made of these details.

Every evening, it spots in the calendar the next day's meetings with outside people. For each one, it first rereads what the team already knows: the client record in the CRM, the notes, the summaries of calls already held. It then searches the web for the company and the person: activity, size, recent news, hiring, public statements.

Finally, it writes a one-page brief: the context, what we already know, the points of attention, and the questions to ask during the call to understand the need. It contacts nobody and writes nowhere other than in the brief.

Four rules, written down rather than left to intuition:

• What we know comes before what we look for. Internal history comes first. Nothing is more awkward than asking a question the client has already answered.
• Every fact has its source and date. A funding round from four years ago is not news. The brief says so.
• Questions rather than a verdict. The brief ends with what to learn during the call. Judging the prospect remains the job of the person making the call.
• What it does not find, it writes down. "No public information about the technical team" is useful. A guess presented as a fact is not.

A brief in short form, for an imagined company (illustrative example, fictional company):

• Context. Industrial joinery, about sixty people, two sites in Gironde. Family takeover three years ago. Hiring a methods manager (job posting online for three weeks).
• What we already know. First conversation three weeks ago: quotes are still made in a spreadsheet, two days of lead time on average. The owner mentioned a competitor "who answers within the hour".
• Not found. No production management tool publicly mentioned: to ask.
• Questions. How many quotes a week, and how many turn into orders? Who prepares them today, and how long does it take? Will the future methods manager have a say on this?

• A good brief fits on one page. Beyond that, nobody reads it before the call.
• The value comes from combining sources. The web alone gives a company profile; with the history of the relationship, it gives an angle.
• The questions to ask are what changes the call the most. You listen better when you know what you are trying to learn.

The same pattern works for any meeting that benefits from preparation: a technician's visit to a client, a recruitment interview, a supplier meeting, an annual account review. The agent gathers what your team already knows, completes it with what is public, and asks the questions. All it needs is a shared calendar and the place where your client notes live: CRM, ERP or a simple folder.