How to Creatively Research Someone Before a Business Conversation - 016

When was the last time you walked into a meeting already knowing what matters to the person you’re meeting—and what would instantly resonate?

Most professionals spend more time choosing what to wear than researching who they’re meeting. That’s not preparation… that’s winging it.

In Episode 016, we break down how to Pre-Read the Room before you ever step into it—because the 1st 5 Minutes don’t start at the handshake. They start when you open your laptop and Take the 5 Before the 5 to Find the 5.

Big Idea

Elite Business Connectors don’t wing the 1st 5 Minutes. They prepare for them.
➡️ Take the 5 Before the 5 to Find the 5.

What You’ll Learn

• Why your “pre-game routine” matters (and why most people don’t have one)
• The 3 benefits of Pre-Reading the Room:
  1. Gain key intel
  2. Calm your nerves
  3. Increase confidence
• The difference between random research vs targeted research (for connection)
• Where to look to find real connection points:
  • Company website
  • LinkedIn (company page + individual profile)
• How to uncover 5 creative connection points that actually spark conversation
• How to use your LTP (Lead Talking Point) without wasting it
• Bonus: the 2QM rule (Two Question Minimum) to keep momentum once you find a connection point

The 5 Connection Points Examples

Use a mix of professional + personal:

• Current/past roles (tenure, transitions, new role questions)
• Education (school, degree, shared connections)
• Certifications/awards/accomplishments (noticed = valued)
• Activity section (posts, comments, articles)
• Personal wins/updates (events, milestones, achievements)

Action Steps (Do This Before Your Next Meeting)

1. Schedule “Take the 5 Before the 5” on your calendar
2. Do targeted research (connection > impressing)
3. Build your list… then trim it to your best 5

Resources to Use:

The System Elite Connectors Use to Remember Names

If you’re serious about improving your business communication skills, I created a step-by-step system you can download right now — absolutely free.

👉 Grab it here: 

30 Connection Questions for Stronger Business Conversations

This is a proven question set to improve every conversation in the 1st 5 minutes.

👉 Grab it here: 

Buy the 1st 5 Minutes Book:

• 1st 5 Minutes Book

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• LinkedIn
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• YouTube

Transcript

Why Preparation Beats Winging It

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When was the last time you walked into a meeting already knowing specific details about who you're going to meet with? Things about the company. What matters to them? What problems do they need solved? What one thing would immediately resonate with them? What are the questions you're going to ask? What's your lead talking point? If your answer is, I don't know, maybe sometimes I know, we've got work to do. Most professionals spend more time choosing what to wear than researching who they're meeting. That's not preparation. That's winging it. Today, we're talking about how to pre-read the room before you ever step into it. Because the first five minutes don't start when you shake hands. They start when you open your laptop to do research before the first five minutes clock even starts. But now, we'll find out the secret sauce on how to creatively research someone before a business conversation that's guaranteed to work and spark an early connection. You in? Welcome to the Elite Business Connector Podcast, where we believe how you interact with people will make or break your opportunity to develop a real and influential connection. Now, whether you're a rookie or a rock star with people, you're in the right place right now. Let's do this. And my promise to you is if you listen and subscribe, I'm going to bring my best content and energy to help you get better every week, communicating and connecting in a business environment. So here's this episode's big idea. Elaine Business Connectors don't wing the first five minutes. They prepare for them. They take the five before the five to find the five. Let me tell you about Jamie. She's nerd of sales, she likes people, she's relational. Those first five minutes always make her a little nervous. Let's call them pregame jitters. She feels like these nerds, and specifically kind of the ambiguity in the first crucial minutes, are potentially sabotaging great conversations from actually connecting. And what Jamie wants, and honestly needs, is a calming factor when walking into this business conversation gives her confidence and a sense of anticipation. She wants to connect without feeling like she's fumbling. And that's exactly what this preparation time is designed to do for her. Maybe you've been Jamie in the past. And the problem is that her and her lack of personality is that she lacks a pregame routine. What if she walks into her business conversations feeling more prepared and created more predictability? She can, and here's how. Every sport has warmups, those moments you prepare to perform at a high level. You stretch, you loosen up, you get into the right head space before the real game begins. In business, especially sales, is no different. Before you meet a customer, you need your own warm-up routine. That's where the pregame comes in. Think about this. Pro athletes don't roll into a game cold just because they're professionals. They don't say, well, I'm just gonna wing it today. I'm good. Not a chance. They go through rituals. Steph Curry takes hundreds of shots before the tip-off. Coca Goff runs her same warm-up sequence before every match. She's rehearsing every serve, her forehand, her backhand. Musicians like, say, Ed Sheeran treat soundcheck like game time, dialing in those vocals, the instruments, the energy before the crowd ever enters that arena. And preparation isn't luck, it's the launch pad for true performance. Why? Well, because it calms nerves, it sets focus, and builds confidence. Your version of that is to pre-read the room. It's your mental and conversational warm-up that makes those first five minutes flow naturally rather than forcing it. Research in sports psychology shows that pre-performance routines reduce anxiety and increase performance consistency. A 2012 study in the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology found that structured pre-performance rituals significantly reduced cognitive anxiety and improved execution. Translation: your brain loves predictability. When you prepare, your nervous system relaxes. Business is a sort of performance. So the question is, where's your warm-up and do you do that? Well, the first habit of elite business connectors, well, they do the little things. They make a big difference. They don't wing it, they prepare. And that first habit, if you will, is to read the room. And reading the room means scanning and getting a pulse of the people and the environment in real time. It's what happens in the first minute of the first five minutes. But here's the key. You don't have to wait until you walk in cold. There's one vital step. Take the five before the five to find the five. Take the five. Now there are three benefits of pre-reading the broom. If you need to be sold on it, here's your reasons why. You pre-read the room to make your real-time reading even more effective. And this is worth the time to take these five minutes to do targeted research. There's a key word, targeted. Your first step is seeing the value in taking these five minutes to pre-read the broom. And here's your first benefit. You're gaining key intel. What if you can get a head start? Maybe it's a piece of information that helps you connect faster and guide the conversation more naturally. That's what key intel gives you. But I can hear the pushback. Brian, I do some research about the customer before we meet. I'm a professional. I know what I'm doing. It's all good. How's this any different? Yeah, fair question. The difference is what kind of research are you doing? What is your end goal? And do you have one? The point here is gaining key and useful intel, not just random details and trying to impress the other person. Our primary goal and gaining key intel is any information that is going to help me connect quickly and naturally with the other person. And all my research must lead me to that end goal. One word, connection. Everything else is noise and not important, at least in the first five minutes. Here's some research to back it up. Research number one. It's called the liking gap by the Harvard Business School. Harvard research has found that in conversations, people consistently underestimate how much the other person actually likes them. And it's called the liking gap. When you reference something specific about someone, let's say maybe their career, their a move that they've made, an award, some accomplishment, you close that gap faster because you signal attention and interest. And how does this happen? Gaining key intel with the goal to connect with that other person. Remember, it's look at you, not look at me. Research number two is called the similarity bias by Princeton and Columbia Studies. People actually trust those who prepare and are very similar to themselves. Even small similarities, so say same school, hometown, have shared interests, increased likability and perceived credibility. Pre-reading the room helps you uncover shared schools, shared interests, shared professional communities, and shared passions. Leak connectors manufacture similarities by discovering it when? Beforehand. It gives them spark moments when you're able to create what I call a me too moment. When you create a me too moment, the liking gap closes and connection happens quickly. You can pre-plan these moments by finding key Intel. Here's the second benefit. Calms your nerves. If meeting new people makes you nervous, Intel is now your safety net. You walk in with conversation started specifically tailored to that person. You're not scrambling for words or guessing. That confidence changes everything. I also find for introverts, having this key intel and a few pre-planned questions and topics decreases their nerves, which allow them to feel calmer and more natural. And oh, by the way, introverts are some of the best in the first five minutes because how they ask, they listen, and they learn. Here's a research piece for this one. Uncertainty increases cortisol. Studies in behavioral neuroscience show uncertainty triggers stress responses. When outcomes are unpredictable, cortisol or cortisol rises. Preparation reduces uncertainty. Reduced uncertainty lowers cortisol. Lower cortisol improves cognitive clarity and emotional regulation. A 2012 study in the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology found that structured pre-performance routines reduce anxiety and improve consistency. Let's talk about athletes again. Athletes will use repetition, visualization, structured warmups. Business professionals, ah, we just walk in cold. We think we're permissible in those moments, but we're leaving it to risk. Creating a five-minute pre-read routine functions as a psychological warm-up and will definitely calm your nerves so you can focus on what? Connecting. Here's the third benefit. It increases your confidence. When you feel prepared, your confidence increases because, at a minimum, well, you have a plan going in and you go in eyes wide open. And the point: who wouldn't want to walk into a business conversation? Having key intel that calms their nerves increases their confidence to focus on connecting. To me, it's simple math, my friend. Here's some research that validates this point. Psychologist Albert Bandura defines self-efficacy as belief in your ability to execute a task. Self-efficacy increases when you have a plan. You've mentally rehearsed. You feel informed. And prereading the room builds micro-self-efficacy before the meeting even begins. You don't feel like you're guessing. You feel like, well, you're executing. Research from UCLA talks about the power of mental stimulation. These studies show that mentally rehearsing a scenario activates many of the same neural pathways as physically performing it. When you read the room, you imagine the opener. You think through your questions, you're rehearsing, which increases execution quality. Remember the purpose in pre-reading the room? Taking the five. Before the five, to find the five. Take the five. You're researching for just five minutes. Before the five, well, that's the actual five minutes. Define the five. Five creative connection points. Now, our goal is to find the five so we can connect quickly, confident, and naturally. I can't say that enough that we get that in our heads. Reading a great book, actually the audiobook. Here's the actual book. It's called Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves by Alison Wood Brooks. Now she advocates finding topics ahead of time that will most likely resonate with the other person. And the five connection points you find, well, they're your talking points. And they're found when you take the five before the five to find the five. How many times have you heard or even said the line? I'm great with faces, but not with names. Among them, be honest. But think about that statement. How does that make the other person feel whose name is very important to them? No judgment here. I used to be the bat guy. Not anymore. Why? Because I made many the name of one of my first five minutes of everything. I'm gonna let you in on a little statement. Remember my name? It's actually a focus picture. I'm gonna help you. I've created a funny resource called Connect your T to remember a name. Nail the name every single time to make it strong. First of all. And you can get this resource absolutely for free. Just go to the show notes to download your copy today. Be the person who cares about the other person's name enough to learn the system on how to remember their name. Download your free resource so you can begin mailing the name every time. We've chosen to take the five, meaning we see the value in taking the five minutes needed for targeted research. Now we transition to find the five. And we'll do that in two locations to find that intel. We're taking the five, meaning five minutes to find the five. But five of what? Connection points. So what's a connection point? It's the spark that quickly catches the other person's attention. Connection point is also the spark that shifts a conversation from transactional to relational. And it's also a moment that makes someone feel seen, heard, and valued. And here are two of the best sources to pre-read the room and find those five connection points. First location, now it's the company website. You want to look for the following. How long have they been in business? Are they public or private? One officer, multiple vocations. How do they describe themselves in their own words? Do they have a tagline? Can you find your contact listed? Now, this is good background information, so you don't ask questions, you should know the answer. Sales expert and author Jeb Blunt, who I'm a big fan of his work, hammers on this point. He says, never ask a question that you could find the answer for ahead of time. It shows your lack of preparation, attention to detail, and distrust. But does the opposite when you're able to share that key intel you found in your preparation and pregame research. The second location is LinkedIn. Now let's call LinkedIn the professional Facebook, if you will, minus the vacation photos and hopeful of those political rants, right? This is the primary professional location to find key intel for your targeted research. Now, I've been asked my opinion on looking at other social media outlets to gain intel on another person. Or my response is find what's appropriate for that first meeting. There's a balance between being prepared and being creepy. Don't be that guy. You don't want them to feel like they've been stalked. My suggestion is stick with LinkedIn to start. And if you really connect with that other person, then consider opening up to X and Instagram in future meetings. I would shy away from Facebook and TikTok until you have an established friendship past work. So let's go back to LinkedIn. There is so much gold to find if you know what to look for. And here are two primary pages. First is the company page. What's posted there that's different from their website? What topics do they post and care about? Note, you may or may not use this in the first five minutes of the conversation, but may be able to leverage it later in the meeting. Better to have it not need it or to use it later. And the key is knowing, well, when to use it. Your primary location on LinkedIn is the person's individual profile. So much information there. Could be their title, time in their role, their career history, education, certifications, recent posts, articles that they've written on or commented on, some of their shared interests or their volunteering. The key is targeted, not random research. You're not just looking for any and the average research. You're looking for unique details that will catch the other person's interest to focus in on them, not you. Whoa, money line there. You're looking for unique details that will catch the other person's interest to focus in on them, not you, aka a connection point, finding that spark. I encourage you to write down as many details as you can between the company website and LinkedIn. Make a large list, then trim it down until you find the five. The five details that you feel are good potential connection points that you also feel will resonate with the other person to leverage your next business conversation. Other intel, it's not discarded, maybe it's just tucked away to use at another time, possibly even later in the meeting. You want to find the five that will move the connection needle. The key is creativity in the first five connection points. Make them each different that provide a different angle to connect with the other person. The five could be, well, first one could be their current or past roles. Have they been with the same company a long time or bounced around? If they've been there seemingly forever, well, I usually respond with, wow, that's impressive, your tender, tenure that you've been at. But also sounds like life without parole. And this always puts a smile on their face and creates an immediate reaction. If they're new to the role, well, it opens up a ton of follow-up questions. Do you feel like you have your bearings in your new role yet? Or what led you to this position? Unpack that. Or what's your biggest challenge in this new role? Second, is their educational background. What school did they attend? What degree did they earn? You may know about that school or someone that went there. How about how their sports teams are doing right then? Can you relate to that degree? You could mention if it's obvious that they're not using the degree and it's nowhere close to what they're doing now. And you comment on that one. Third is model their professional certifications, awards, skills, aka, their accomplishments. This is big, and they want someone to notice it because they, well, they posted it on LinkedIn. Give them mad kudos and ask them to tell you more about it. I guarantee they will talk to you about that, and that's a spark within that connection point. Fourth is, well, what are they displaying in the activity section? And how can you find something unique to comment on? Fifth could be something personal they posted, an anniversary, could be for work or marriage, an event that they attended, closing a big deal, maybe it's a book they're reading, a thought leadership post. Your targeted five minutes of research should be a blend of both professional and personal. And the point here on find the five connection points is that it sets you up to go a number of directions in those first five minutes. You want options. Prepare, then improvise. Learning how to preread the room before the clock even starts gives you an unfair advantage. Well, why? Hardly anybody else is doing it. And if they do, it's random, not targeted research is not definitely finding the five connection points designed to spark the other person's interest. If you're looking for a competitive edge, an advantage, this is it. Remember the benefits of pre-reading the room? You're gaining intel, you're calming your nerves, and you're also gaining confidence. In the first five minutes book, I use the phrase LTP, lead talking point. Consider this your opening comments, but also every single person wastes their LTP. Not an elite business connector. They use it strategically. So let's practice and let me give you a couple of examples. I was taking the five before the five to find the five. And I found on LinkedIn the VP I was meeting with had just run a marathon. This falls under a personal post. Instead of jumping into the introductions and talking about, well, the weather, how nice their office is, yada, yada, yada, opened up with congrats on finishing your marathon. What was that experience like? Acknowledgement of the marathon. A question, what was that experience like? Immediately, the VP lit up. He talked about training at 5 a.m., about mile 22 hitting him hard. Talked about his family at the finish line and what that felt like. Guess what happened to the room? Everybody was relaxed. Trust accelerated between us. By the time we shifted to business, there was momentum and the VP, well, he was locked in. All because I took the five before the five to find the five. And what was one of my topic connection points? I found in my first five minutes of research. His personal marathon achievement. I kept focusing on him and not bringing up my challenge with running or my own accomplishments. It's look at you, not look at me time. So let me flip this. For example, if you look me up on LinkedIn, here's what you'll find in a matter of seconds. You'll see that I'm a corporate trainer, I'm an author, I speak, I'm a podcaster, I have expertise in IoT and M2M. I'm a graduate of Liberty University, Postmaster Certified Speaker, that I'm left-handed. Well, I am, but not really. I didn't have that in my LinkedIn profile. Just want to see if you're paying attention. But imagine someone walking up to me and saying, Brian, I just saw that you published a new book. Congratulations. I also noticed you're a podcaster and I just downloaded one of the episodes that I can listen to. And man, I'm looking forward to learning from you. Or I've always had an interest in writing a book and I just picked your book up. Any advice? Or maybe they noticed I'm supporting certain causes and volunteering with Food for the Hungry and Compassion International. And they say, well, what drew you to those causes? Or I've heard of Toastmasters Club. How did it help you as a public speaker? Boom. Instant engagement. Homework equals respect. Respect equals trust. Trust equals influence. And influence is connection. I'd be impressed that you did your pre-read the room. It just takes five minutes. But that moment of key intel makes a massive difference. Huge ROI. Here's a free bonus tip. Once you find the connection point that resonates with the other person, implement what I call 2QM, two question minimum. After you make the initial LTP, whether it's a comment from your intel or observation, always ask a follow-up question. Why? Well, it obviously matters to the other person and shows your listening and care about what's important to them first, not what's important to you. Look at you, not look at me. Here's some closing thoughts. The elite advantage. And here's what separates the average from elite. Average says, I'll figure it out when I get there. I don't need to do research. I'm good. Elite says, I already thought about how this begins, and I'm gonna nail it. You don't need 30 minutes. You need five. Five focus minutes, a pre-reading with targeted research that can transform the first five. Now, just because you have your list and five connection points from your targeted research, be aware of two closing details. First, is you don't have to use all of them in the first five minutes. And second, some will resonate more than others. And the one that does resonate, focus in on that one. Ask more questions, be curious, continual, and clarifying. Here's a closing pro tip. You may be well into your fact-finding, your presentation, or even your closing, but you can still circle back to one of those five connection points there too. You may use it in your goodbyes. Use OQ, observational intelligence, to determine when and if you should use this targeted research. Find other ways to implement those five connection points you found. Could be in a follow-up. The takeaway is preparation. Or another way to say it is prepare so you can improvise. Your preparation, prereading the room before the clock even starts, gives you the flexibility and the opportunity to focus in on connecting quickly and confidently, but still very naturally in those first five minutes. So let's leave with a few action items. First one, begin scheduling take the five before the five to find the five for your next business conversation. Put it in your calendar and make it an absolute and no-brainer appointment on your schedule. What gets scheduled gets done. Second, do targeted research to find a balance of professional and personal possible connections that when you try to find. And third, narrow your list down to your top five connection points, a blend of professional and personal. As we do at the end of the episode, we do a sneak peek of the following episode. In that episode, we're going to be focusing on how do you begin asking questions in the first five minutes of a business conversation? What are obstacles that keep us from asking questions? And what are some proven starter questions to ask in the first minute to get people's attention and get you comfortable during the first critical minute to connect as well? We're going to question everything in the next episode. And this episode, 16, is officially in the books, in and out, and thankfully nobody got hurt. Remember to subscribe to and share the podcast if you're the extra mild guy or girl and consider rating the show. And don't forget that all this episode's information are links in the show notes that you can follow up on. And I encourage you to pick up the free resource the System Elite Connectors use to remember names. You can find the link in the show notes. And as my Chicago Bears chant, good, better, best, never let it rest till your good gets better and your better gets best. My father used to say, thanks for coming, but most of all, thanks for leaving. I'm out. You got this now. Now is your time to do something with this episode. And always remember to leverage your first five minutes to build connection, trust, and influence. You got this now.