Do the opening minutes of a client meeting really matter?

Every word of the video, in plain text.

When I reflect back on it, I realize I never used to do small talk. I wasn't comfortable with it. I thought it was a waste of time, something to get through before the real work of the meeting started. Psychologically, you could probably say I was in my own head more than anything, and that may well be true. But what I came to understand, doing the work I do now, is that small talk isn't small at all.

It's only small when it's a filler – surface chat about the weekend, the weather, whatever fills a silence. That's not what I'm talking about. The opening minutes of a meeting are where we get out of our own world and into our client's. Rush it or skip it and we rob ourselves of one of the things we need most: the time to get related, to understand where the client's head is at right now, what their week has been like, and what's on their mind.

Now I raise this because in the businesses we work with, the people winning the work are rarely salespeople. They're the engineers, the lawyers, the project managers, the estimators – the experts at the work who never chose selling, and who often treat the start of a client meeting exactly the way I used to. Something to get through.

And that matters for two reasons. The first is that the rest of the conversation draws on what the client brings. Their feelings, their read on what's happening and what could happen next. Walk straight in and put a number or a recommendation on the table and that's precisely what you're doing. Throwing it at them rather than working with them. The second is that some of these meetings will surface hard things. A trend heading the wrong way. A decision that hasn't produced what was expected. A conversation the person across the table had been quietly avoiding. You can't open on a subject like that cold. You have to help them prepare for it by letting them talk it out, get it off their chest, feel heard, and get back to a place where the real work can actually happen.

Done well, the opening does three things. It gets both sides oriented, so neither is guessing at where the other stands. It lands you on the same page about what's genuinely worth talking about today. And it gets you both ready for the work that matters. The kind that needs both people present, attentive and willing. You can't do it alone.

For people whose relationship with their clients is sacred, this isn't a sales technique bolted on. It's the same craft I had to learn myself. Skip the beginning and the rest of the meeting quietly underperforms – until eventually you stop looking forward to the meetings. And so does the client. But get this right and both you and your client will deepen your relationship and your results together.