Sales Reps, Here’s a Pre-Call Cheat Sheet for Top Performers

The panic sets in.

It’s 1:58PM. You have a demo at 2:00PM. 15 tabs are open: LinkedIn, the prospect’s website, Salesforce, and a Google Doc, just to name a few.

You’re frantically trying to figure out if the person you’re about to talk to has been there for six months or six years.

You aren’t preparing. You’re panicking.

Sales leaders generally advise you to spend 20 minutes researching every prospect. But if you have five calls a day, that’s nearly two hours you aren’t selling.

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes. You just need to be relevant.

Here’s a cheat sheet that the most efficient top performers in sales use to prepare for any meeting.

Copy This 5-Point Pre-Meeting Checklist

If you’re doing this manually, take a deep breath. You only need five specific data points to sound like an expert and control the room.

#1. Human Context

Don’t just memorize their name. Understand their tenure.

A prospect’s start date tells you more about their psychology than their alma mater ever will.

• What to look for: Job title and time in role.
• Why you want this: A Director of Marketing who started three months ago has different pain points than a VP who’s been there for five years. One wants to shake things up, and the other wants to protect the status quo.
• Where to look: LinkedIn headline and experience sections.

If they’re new, pitch change. If they’re established, pitch optimization.

#2. Individual or Company Trigger

Relevance beats personalization every time. You need to prove within the first minute that you understand the business context they’re operating in right now.

• What to look for: Recent funding, hiring sprees, or press releases.
• Why you want this: Mentioning “I saw your post about looking for a new social media management platform” or “I noticed Acme Labs recently raised $12 million” is infinitely better than “I saw you went to Michigan State.” It shows business acumen, not just stalking skills.
• Where to look: Employee or company-issued LinkedIn posts, Crunchbase, or news outlets.

Find the money or the stress. This is where the deal lives.

#3. Historical Baggage

There’s nothing worse than pitching a prospect who ghosted your colleague six months ago. You need to know if they’re walking into a warm room or a minefield.

• What to look for: Have we spoken to them (or their company) before?
• Why you want this: You need to know if the bridge is already burned, or if there’s an existing relationship you can leverage. Don’t let a fresh lead turn into an awkward apology.
• Where to look: Your CRM activity history.

If the data is missing or fragmented, assume nothing. But if it’s there, use it to fast-forward the conversation.

#4. Trojan Horse

You need one sentence to prove you aren’t a robot spitting out a generic script. You don’t need to be friends, but you do need to establish credibility.

• What to look for: A mutual connection, a shared tool in their tech stack, or a specific observation about their website.
• Why you want this: “I see that you’re also connected with my former colleague Joe Smith” creates immediate common ground. It shifts the dynamic from ‘salesperson and prospect’ to ‘peer and peer.’
• Where to look: LinkedIn’s mutual connections list.

Find the common ground that relates to the problem you solve.

#5. Hard Stop

Never get on a Zoom call without knowing exactly how you want to get off it. You need to define the destination before you start the car.

• What to define: The specific goal of this call.
• Why you want this: A call without an agenda is just a chat. Define the next steps, like a demo or an intro to a decision-maker, before you start.
• Where to look: The calendar invite.

If you don’t lead the meeting, they will. And they’ll usually lead it to this dreaded sentence: “Let me think about it.”

Why Manual Prep is Killing Your Quota

The checklist above works. But let’s be honest: It’s still manual labor.

If you’re doing this for every single call, you’re wasting prime selling hours doing data entry and tab switching.

The problem with this is the assumption that sellers must drown in pre-call research to keep up.

Yet the ‘lazy’ top performer doesn’t actually do much research manually. They have a Revenue Operating System to do it for them.

Be Prepared, Not Busy: Automate Your Intelligence

Today, your software should be the one doing the detective work.

Reevo, the Revenue Operating System, automates pre-call research for sales reps. Prospect data syncs directly into the platform, and new contacts and accounts are automatically validated, deduped, and mapped against existing records.

Every call feels informed and intentional, not frantic.

The difference between a grinder and a top performer isn’t how hard they work. It’s what they work on.

Enough acting like a private investigator. Use a platform that hands you the answers so you can focus on your actual job: selling.

Get started with Reevo.