Too many people set up a meeting with a prospective customer or distribution partner, then immediately start to create a PowerPoint (or equivalent) presentation for the event. In many cases they will adapt an earlier version so they can reuse slides and get it done faster. Even though they may feel they are making progress and can check the work off as done, they might be missing an opportunity to really get their message across. In this case Haste Makes Waste.

A PowerPoint, to take one example, might be the least effective way to make the sale. This next meeting might be a one-on-one in an office, rather than the large conference room you created the deck for. This meeting might be at a different stage in the selling cycle, with a buyer who has different questions on her mind. This meeting might be with a company that wants to include other team members in the post-meeting discussion, who might not understand the key messages in a presentation deck. Lots of things may go wrong.

The best approach is first to write a Marketing Brief (sometimes called a Creative Brief), get agreement from your team that it is on-target, and only then create the marketing materials. When you agree on the marketing brief, you can assess the resulting marketing materials by how well they deliver on the brief versus judging them by whether you or anyone else “likes” it. A well-written brief can help the entire team judge the marketing materials objectively.