How to Settle Yourself Before a High-Stakes Meeting

Imagine a personal trainer named Matteo Brandt who trains clients in their own homes. Gideon Ashdown runs an investment firm, and his assistant, Ruth, has booked Matteo for a first meeting on Thursday at 7 a.m. Mr. Ashdown wants a trainer three mornings a week in the gym in his basement. Matteo has just raised his price to $2,400 a month for three mornings. He has written the new price in emails, and he has never said it aloud.

On Wednesday evening, Matteo writes a 12-week program for Mr. Ashdown. At 11 that night, he rewrites it. In bed, he goes over the meeting. He thinks about what Mr. Ashdown might ask about his training, and what he will say if $2,400 is too much. In the car the next morning, he goes over it again. By the time he rings the bell, his shoulders are up near his ears.

In the basement, Mr. Ashdown mentions that his left knee was operated on last spring. Matteo’s program opens with four weeks of squats, so he leaves it in his bag. When Mr. Ashdown asks the price, Matteo says, “It’s, um, about $2,400 a month. Roughly. For the three mornings.” Mr. Ashdown says that he will let Matteo know. Two days later, Ruth writes that Mr. Ashdown has chosen a trainer from his club.

Suppose instead that on Wednesday afternoon, Matteo sends Ruth two questions. He asks what equipment the basement has, and whether Mr. Ashdown has any injuries. Ruth answers within the hour. There is a rack, a set of dumbbells, and a rowing machine. Mr. Ashdown had surgery on his left knee last spring. Matteo writes the equipment, the knee, and his price on a card.

Then, standing in his kitchen, he says the price aloud three times. “It’s $2,400 a month for three mornings a week.” The first time, “about” slips in. By the third, it sounds like a sentence he has said before. He puts the card in his bag and spends the evening writing next week’s sessions for two other clients.

In the car on Thursday, his shoulders are tight anyway. At the front door, he rolls them back twice and rings the bell. In the basement, he asks about the knee first. When Mr. Ashdown asks the price, Matteo says the sentence he said in his kitchen, and stops. Mr. Ashdown asks whether Monday at six is too early. Matteo says that it is not.

Matteo was nervous both times. What changed was the kind of preparation he did. In the first version, most of it had no end. He rewrote a program for a man he had not met. He went over the meeting in bed, and again in the car. None of it told him about the knee, and he never heard himself say $2,400.

In the second version, each task ended. Two questions got two answers. Three facts went on a card, and one sentence was said aloud three times. Then he stopped, and gave his mind something else.

So in the hours before a high-stakes meeting, do the preparation that settles something, and say your price aloud. Then stop, and leave the meeting alone until you walk in. Here is why going over the meeting winds you up, and what the preparation that calms you looks like.

Going over a meeting in your head keeps the nerves high

In 2011, two psychologists at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Wong and Moulds, published an experiment with university students. Each student was about to give a speech with no time to prepare it. Beforehand, some of them spent the wait going over the speech to come. The others were given something else to think about.

The students who went over the speech felt more anxious than the ones who were distracted. That held for every student in the study. Some of the students were anxious in company to begin with. In those students, a sensor on the skin showed the extra anxiety too. The more anxious those students felt, the worse their speeches went.

In 2003, Hinrichsen and Clark reported a similar study in London. Some people spent the time before a speech thinking ahead the way anxious people tend to. Others did a task to take their minds off it. The first group stayed anxious right up to the speech. During the speech, their anxiety rose higher than it did in the people who were distracted.

Those were people giving a speech, and the step to a client’s house is the course’s own. Here is the step. A high-stakes meeting is a kind of speech, given to someone who can judge you. Going over it in bed and in the car is what the first group in each study did. The only change is that it goes on for hours instead of minutes.

Not every thought about the meeting is going over it. The course draws the line at whether the task ends. A question ends when you get the answer. The facts the meeting depends on are done when they are on a card. Going over the meeting has no end, because there is always one more question the client might ask.

Matteo’s 12-week program had no end either. It was the extra preparation that comes with feeling out of place. So do the tasks that end, and then give your mind something else, as the distracted students did.

A New York wedding photographer settles her questions before the day, and still gets nervous

Susan Stripling is a wedding photographer in New York. On a page of her website about how she works, she describes what she asks of a couple beforehand. She wants to know their timeline in detail, “including the parts you assume are standard.” Her reason is one sentence. “I would rather answer twenty questions in advance than guess on the day.”

She has been doing this a long time, and the nerves still come. “Twenty five years in, more than 780 weddings, and I still get nervous before the first frame of a wedding day,” she writes. “I have decided that is a good sign.”

A wedding day is not a client meeting, and the step from one to the other is the course’s own. Here is the step. Stripling’s questions are preparation that ends. Each answer is one less thing to guess at in the room, and one less to go over the night before.

Her nerves come anyway, and she takes them as a good sign. The course takes the same view of the fast heart, which is your body getting ready. So the aim of preparing is to have nothing left to guess at when the nerves come.

A New York broker does one short act at the door before a big pitch

In 2015, Fredrik Eklund was the top-grossing real estate broker in New York City. That year, he told Entrepreneur what nerves do to him. “I don’t get nervous that often, but when I do it’s as though I’m locked up and I get stiff,” he said.

His fix comes at the door. Before a big pitch, he does a high kick “right as I’m about to open the door to the meeting room.” He said that it “brings this energy circulating in the body and makes me very confident.”

You do not need to kick. What carries over is where his fix comes and how long it takes. It comes at the door, after the preparing is over, and it takes a second. The course’s suggestion is something small that a client who opens the door early would not notice. Rolling your shoulders back, or one slow breath out, would do. Keep it the same every time, so that it marks the end of preparing and the start of the meeting.

Say your price aloud before the meeting, so the figure is not new to you

Many service professionals write their price in emails and proposals far more often than they say it. A new price may not have been said aloud at all, as with Matteo’s $2,400. Then the first time you hear yourself say the figure is in front of the client, when you are most nervous.

The course’s suggestion is to say the price aloud before the meeting, and its reason is simple. A figure you have only written is new to your voice. A figure you have said a few times is a sentence you have said before. So it comes out the way you said it.

Some research points the same way. In 2010, MacLeod and four colleagues at the University of Waterloo in Ontario ran eight experiments. They were testing what they call the production effect. People studied a list of words, saying some of them aloud and reading the rest silently. Afterward, they remembered the words they had said aloud better. The researchers’ explanation is that the spoken words stood out from the rest.

Those were lists of words, and the step to your price is the course’s own. On the day of the meeting, your price sentence is the one you said aloud, among notes you only read. So it is the one that stands out when you reach for it.

Saying it aloud does a smaller job than practicing your answers under pressure with a colleague. That practice, over weeks, is what makes the old habits stop. The rehearsal on the day only makes sure the figure is not new to you.

Say the complete answer you wrote down, in the words you will use, with the round figure in it. If “about” or “roughly” slips in, say the sentence again without it. Those are the words a colleague with a clicker counts.

Three times is the course’s suggestion. By the third time, the figure sounds like a sentence you have said before. More than that starts to turn into going over the meeting.

Why going over the objections the night before goes wrong

Imagine a home organizer named Pia Lindahl who is meeting Mrs. Corrigan about clearing out the garage and the attic. The family moves in June. Pia’s price for the job is $4,800.

The night before, she wants to be ready for anything. She writes down every objection Mrs. Corrigan might raise, with an answer to each. She says the answers aloud at the kitchen table, and again in the car the next morning. The one she says most is her answer to “That’s more than I expected.”

Mrs. Corrigan shows her the garage, and they agree on what goes. When Mrs. Corrigan asks the price, Pia says, “It’s $4,800. I know that’s more than some organizers charge, but it includes the hauling and the drop-offs.” Mrs. Corrigan had said nothing about other organizers. Now she asks what they charge, and she says she will get a second quote. She hires the organizer her neighbor used.

Pia’s mistake was going over a conversation that had not happened, until her answer to it came out by itself. Mrs. Corrigan heard a defense of a price that nobody had questioned. Adding reasons after a price told her there was something to question.

The version that works rehearses one sentence and stops there. “It’s $4,800 for the garage and the attic, with the hauling included.” Then Pia closes the notebook and spends the evening on something else.

Stopping early is not being careless

Many professionals who care about their work feel that stopping early is careless. If one more hour might catch the question that loses the job, the hour seems worth spending.

An hour of going over the meeting rarely catches that question. Matteo’s evening in bed and in the car did not tell him about the knee, and two questions to Ruth did. Stripling, after more than 780 weddings, puts her effort into questions asked in advance. In the study by Wong and Moulds, the students who thought about something else before the speech were the calmer ones.

The preparation that matters is on your card by the evening. What is left after that is going over the meeting, and it costs you calm without making you any readier.

How to prepare in the hours before a high-stakes meeting

1. The day before, write down what you do not know about the meeting that would change what you bring or say. Ask the client, or whoever booked the meeting, in one short message. For example, a florist can text a bride’s mother, “Will your daughter join us on Thursday, and is there a table where I can lay out the samples?”
2. Put the facts the meeting depends on onto one card, with your price sentence at the bottom. For example, a dog walker’s card holds the dog’s name, the two walk times the family asked for, and his monthly price.
3. On the day, before you leave, say the price sentence aloud three times. Stand up, and use the voice you will use with the client. If “about,” “roughly,” or “just” slips in, say it again without it. For example, a tutor says in her kitchen, “It’s $3,000 for the term, with two sessions a week.”
4. Then put the card in your bag, and give your attention to something else until it is time to leave. When you catch yourself going over the meeting, go back to what you were doing. Do not go over the objections. For example, a caterer spends the evening on Saturday’s order for another client.
5. Choose one short act for the last moment before the door. Make it small enough that a client who opens the door early would not notice. Do the same act every time. For example, a personal stylist presses her feet into the doormat and lets out one slow breath before she rings the bell.

Next: You will see how to keep your composure in the middle of a conversation, when something the client says throws you.