How to Start a Brilliant Meeting with a strategic partner (The First 90 Seconds Matter Most)

The first 90 seconds of a meeting decide whether it goes anywhere. Get them wrong, and you spend the rest of the meeting trying to claw back credibility you never needed to lose in the first place.

Most people open a meeting with small talk. It feels natural, but it wastes the most valuable time you have, and it tells the other person nothing about why they should be listening to you. Here's what to do instead.

Open With Credibility, Not Small Talk

Skip "how was your weekend, traffic okay?" It burns 30 seconds you can't get back, and it does nothing to earn attention.

Open instead with one line that establishes why you're worth their time: a relevant result, a specific reason you reached out, or a shared connection.

A couple of examples:

"The reason I wanted to get this in the diary, we've recently helped a business in the plumbing sector make a real difference for their clients, and I'd love to understand a bit more about who you work with, because there could be some quick wins to help you deliver even more value to them and vice versa with the people I work with."

"[Name] mentioned the kind of clients you work with, and given what we've just done for businesses in a similar space, I thought it made sense to have a proper conversation about how that could support the people you look after."

One sentence, then move on. Don't turn it into a pitch before you've even set the agenda.

Set the Agenda in One Sentence

Before diving into the conversation, say what the meeting is for, in one line. This is what prevents a meeting from drifting without direction, nobody should leave unsure why it happened.

A simple version of this: "I wanted to spend 20 minutes seeing if there's a genuine fit between what we both do, and if there is, figure out what a next step could look like."

This does two jobs at once. It sets clear expectations on time and purpose, and it signals you're not there to waste anyone's time, which itself builds credibility before you've said anything else.

Get the Other Person Talking First

The person who talks most in the first five minutes should be them, not you. If you're doing the talking early on, you're gathering nothing, and building rapport the slow way.

Ask one open question early:

"Tell me about your clients, and where you feel you could add more value for them right now."

or

"Talk me through how you're currently delivering value to your clients day to day."

This does two things at once. It gets you the information you'd otherwise have to draw out later in the conversation, and it builds rapport faster than small talk ever will, because people warm up to being listened to, not entertained.

The Three Moves, In Order

1. Open with credibility, not small talk.

2. Set the agenda in one sentence. (Ensure to add the word “value”)

3. Get them talking first.

Nail those three in the first 90 seconds, and the rest of the meeting tends to take care of itself. We call this positioning, get that clear in the first moments of the meeting and everything from there can run smoothly.

Why This Matters More Than People Think

Most business owners spend far more time preparing what they're going to say in the middle of a meeting than they do preparing how they're going to open it. That's backwards. The opening is what earns you the right to be listened to for the rest of the conversation, get it wrong and everything you say afterwards is working against a credibility deficit you created yourself. Get it right, and the other 20 minutes become far easier, because you've already shown the other person this meeting is worth their attention.

Want help planning yours? Copy the prompt below into ChatGPT or Claude before your next strategic partner meeting:

"I'm meeting a potential strategic partner. My business does [what you do], and we've recently helped a client achieve [a specific result]. Their business does [what they do] and their clients are [describe their client base]. Help me write: 1) a one-line credibility opener that focuses on the value we could add to their clients, not to them directly, 2) a one-sentence agenda for the meeting, that describes a simple next step to follow up, and 3) two open questions to get them talking about their clients and where they might need more value delivered."

[Fill in the brackets with your own details, and you'll walk in with your opener, agenda, and questions ready, tailored to that specific partner rather than generic.]

If you have a meeting in the diary and would like to ensure you have everything prepared correctly to maximise the potential, jump into a free session and I will make sure you are ready > https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/phil-ball

This post accompanies the video "How to Start a Brilliant Meeting (The First 90 Seconds Matter Most)," part of a weekly series on building strategic partnerships. New video and blog post every Monday.

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