Talk Your Way to the Top: How to Address Any Audience Like Your Career Depends On It

Key Learnings for Orchestrating the Successful Business Lunch

Do:

• Start the meeting in your office, one hour earlier, so you make progress and go to lunch with momentum. Both meetings will sparkle that way.

• Plan what you want to accomplish at the premeeting and the luncheon. Improvisation is for the theater and doesn’t work there that often. Don’t rely on it for a business meeting.

• Preselect your restaurant—so good acoustics, ample space, fine service, and a solicitous maitre d’ are all standing by.

Don’t:

• Think charm alone can make a lunch meeting successful. Charm lasts for five minutes. The lunch will take an hour-and-a-half. Plan it out and have an agenda.

• Expect to get it all done at lunch. Instead, start with a one-hour office meeting. Then the lunch part will be really productive.

• Use a business lunch to try out a new restaurant. Egad, that’s so foolhardy it deserves to be punished. And it will be.